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frasersimons 's review for:
Memory Man
by David Baldacci
Baldacci is good at commercial fiction. He knows how to deploy narrative devices to keep you turning the page. The premise is usually at least a bit interesting. I like the Robie series I’ve read because he also subverts tropes and uses his large audience to raise issues sometimes.
He tries to do it this time too... but unfortunately clearly didn’t consult with necessary people to nail the more ambitious than normal character he attempts to tackle in the antagonist here. I’ll talk about that more in a bit but can’t do so without spoilers, I’ll put that further down.
The premise for this one is alright, but not very novel. The guy has an eidetic memory that’s been supercharged basically. I like that Amos is flawed, kind of the opposite of Sherlock. All the memory but not as good at deductive reasoning. The plot keeps you turning pages but the clues that propel the story feel pretty unbelievable at times. Some are just straight up stretches that’ll have you cocking your head.
It was a decent commercial fiction read but unfortunately some elements are handled poorly. Vernacular around body types and inclusive language in general is just really poorly handled. LGBTQIA2S issues are similarly mishandled.
Together it sours the ending of something that would have been fine, not great. It has good pacing and uneven dialogue, but better than just plain bad dialogue. I really like how in all of his books he doesn’t rely on sex or sexual tension between lead characters to gesture at their relationships or bait readers. He has men and women interacting like people and he writes women better than most commercial fiction, imo. It’s frustrating because it could have been legitimately really good and feature great representation, just fumbles it in the later 3/4.
Spoilers:
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The villain is an intersex person who has some elements that were commendable. Using a huge audience to talk about how wrong it is for ignorant people to treat marginalized people, especially little known intersex people. But associating mental illness and questioning their gender. Flip flopping pronouns when sex is in question. The actual persons character arc and final end just further plays into how these characters are typed already. It’s too bad more effort wasn’t made to nail this character because it could have been much better.
He tries to do it this time too... but unfortunately clearly didn’t consult with necessary people to nail the more ambitious than normal character he attempts to tackle in the antagonist here. I’ll talk about that more in a bit but can’t do so without spoilers, I’ll put that further down.
The premise for this one is alright, but not very novel. The guy has an eidetic memory that’s been supercharged basically. I like that Amos is flawed, kind of the opposite of Sherlock. All the memory but not as good at deductive reasoning. The plot keeps you turning pages but the clues that propel the story feel pretty unbelievable at times. Some are just straight up stretches that’ll have you cocking your head.
It was a decent commercial fiction read but unfortunately some elements are handled poorly. Vernacular around body types and inclusive language in general is just really poorly handled. LGBTQIA2S issues are similarly mishandled.
Together it sours the ending of something that would have been fine, not great. It has good pacing and uneven dialogue, but better than just plain bad dialogue. I really like how in all of his books he doesn’t rely on sex or sexual tension between lead characters to gesture at their relationships or bait readers. He has men and women interacting like people and he writes women better than most commercial fiction, imo. It’s frustrating because it could have been legitimately really good and feature great representation, just fumbles it in the later 3/4.
Spoilers:
X
X
X
The villain is an intersex person who has some elements that were commendable. Using a huge audience to talk about how wrong it is for ignorant people to treat marginalized people, especially little known intersex people. But associating mental illness and questioning their gender. Flip flopping pronouns when sex is in question. The actual persons character arc and final end just further plays into how these characters are typed already. It’s too bad more effort wasn’t made to nail this character because it could have been much better.