(This is my review of the book Recursion by Blake Crouch. Please see this post (spoiler alert) for an explanation of the plot and timelines. If you’re looking for Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter instead, you can find the review here and explainer here )

The movie Memento had this effect on me two decades ago… and so did Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy: captivated me to the point that days after finishing them I found myself re-reading (re-watching) passages, analyzing story sequences and convincing myself I have truly grasped the story. Recursion by Blake Crouch, did the same to me this week. It is an ambitious, original and clever mind-bender—a SciFi thriller and winner of the Goodreads 2019 Choice SciFi category award.

(Edit: To be clear, I’m not saying Recursion is as good as Memento or Foundation. It’s not. The similarity to the other two is in that the conclusion made me re-evaluate all preceding events in the book.)

Recursion features time travel—but through memory. Mr Crouch is careful not to use the phrase time travel anywhere in the book—the premise being that we inherently experience everything asynchronously and it is “Memory that makes Reality”; our limited cognitive abilities shape how we perceive the world and severely restrict our ability to understand reality and reduce it to a sequential unfolding of events. 

Making all this memory travel possible is a chair that allows a person to be transported back to a past memory and thus back in time initiating a potential new unfolding of events. The story is narrated from the perspectives of two protagonists and the multiple timelines of their lives: Helena Smith, the neuroscientist and inventor of the chair, and Barry Sutton, an NYPD detective.

There is a lot of hand-waving to explain the principles behind The Chair; and a lot of philosophy quoted—from Locke to Kierkegaard. But these all fall short in building any meaningful understanding of the underlying foundations of the Chair. The attempts to explain the science behind the working of the chair are equally feeble at best. There’s some customary quantum mechanics thrown in too. But while Mr. Crouch fails to provide a satisfactory explanation of why and how the Chair does what it does, he does well to lay down the rules of how the chair works. I re-read several parts to verify the consistency of Mr. Crouch’s premises and the book delivers! (mostly). This is the book’s saving grace. And so, once you get past the lack of any real science and accept the premise, there’s an intricately plotted and well written page turner waiting.

(But to be clear, there are some seeming inconsistencies or open questions, to be more charitable—at least in my understanding of the story. I cover these in this post – SPOILER WARNING)

The memory travel leads to numerous interwoven timelines as expected. While keeping up with them all is challenging, it is also rewarding. We encounter a few stereotypical themes and characters through the book—individuals (and governments) with their own vision for use of the chair paired with self righteousness; and apocalyptic end of humanity scenarios. There is the timeworn discussion of the morality (and ethics) of interfering with the past leading to debates on what is good vs. bad use of the power to travel back in time. 

The cliches notwithstanding, Mr. Crouch makes all this delightfully fascinating, narrating the story at a fast pace through the circumstances and personal struggles of Helena and Barry—a story that is both deeply emotional and thought provoking.
What one thing would you change if you could go back in time? How would you justify it? Even if that event is the aversion of a single tragedy, would that necessarily make the world a better place? Would that make your life truly happier in the long run? What would holding memories of two different lives concurrently feel like? How would it feel to do it without any understanding why one might have two sets of memories? Is time truly an illusion possibly like everything else?

The plot holds up for the most part. I do have some questions on events/reasoning that I don’t understand. But they are not so substantial that I cannot overlook them. But they do force me to retract one star from a possible 5 star rating. I have seen some reviews critical of the plot and raising several potential plot holes. I’ve put together this timeline guide for those who’ve read the book (WARNING: Spoilers) and tried to answer the questions that I’ve seen most often on Goodreads and other sites.  

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book, my favorite so far of 2020—enough to tempt me to pick up Blake Crouch’s other acclaimed work: Dark Matter.

(Edit: I did read Dark Matter eventually. You can find my review here and explainer here)