The Memory Artists

This tragicomic novel revolves around the notion of memory : one character falls into a pit of forgetfulness through Alzheimer's and tries to claw her way out, while the other, her son, suffers from hypermnesia - an inability to forget that warps and scrambles even the simplest communication. Noel Burun's remarkable memory, like that of many famous writers, artists and musicians, comes from the fact that he has synaesthesia - words bring about a kaleidoscopic rush of associated colours. When the story opens, Noel's mother is in the early throes of dementia and we learn her past through flashbacks and the crystalline reminiscences of her son, while her own present is depicted in her own confused interior monologue. Noel is resolved to help her overcome her illness and begins to secretly experiment with various homemade cures - from aromatherapy to homeopathy to chinese medicine. In fact the treatments more often have detrimental side effects such as bowel disorders or fainting and this is the comic part of the text. Also comic is the fact that he does eventually come up with a (suitably New Age) cure. Apart from a paen to memory and poetry (Mnesmosyne is the mother of the Muses), the novel is a satyric and comic literary portrait of new millennium science and alternative medicine, psyciatry and pseudo-psychiatry, art and artistic pretension.