Brain Rose

by Nancy Kress

When Caroline Bohentin, Joe McLaren, and Robbie Brekke undergo Previous Life Access Surgery, the journeys into their separate pasts turn out to have an interwoven, horrifying relevance to the future of humankind

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy

324 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Nancy Kress is an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo and Nebula-winning 1991 novella Beggars in Spain which was later expanded into a novel with the same title. In addition to her novels, Kress has written numerous short stories and is a regular columnist for Writer's Digest. She is a regular at Clarion writing workshops and at The Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland. During the Winter of 2008/09, Nancy Kress is the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

What we have here, is a good premise...wasted. Nancy Kress came up with the premise that a simple brain operation could unlock our previous lives, as well as cure several major diseases. I expected the story to start showing us how remembering their past lives influenced people's current lives, and she does give us a bit of that. In fact, she gives us someone who remembered being an old cowboy with a forgotten stash, surely the most hackneyed memory possible. Then, she aims for some sort of universal higher balance and weaves the past lives as an integral part of that.

Unfortunately, she set the story in 2022, and published it in 1990. She chose to fill those fictional years with a super backlash against AIDS victims, which must have seemed dated even when it came out. That was followed by another terrible virus which took victims' memories. I think the story would have been more enjoyable if she'd left the AIDS stuff out, and set it a hundred years in the future instead, to give herself some slack before becoming completely dated.

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this in the end, although it took almost to the end for that liking to really kick in. Kress is a wonderful writer with a strong sense of craft--she even writes books on writing. She became a favorite after I read her Beggars in Spain. This isn't as great as that--but still good. It's set in near future America of 2022--even closer now than when it was published in 1990. As is usually the case with science fiction, such speculative details date fast. For quite a while I found that annoying and distracting. The backdrop includes an AIDS epidemic that took a much larger, much more devastating toll than has been the case--nearly wiping out the African population and causing a major anti-gay backlash. There's also this weird cult of Gaiests who believe the planet automatically corrects any ecological damage. It annoyed me because it made me think, wow, no wonder I'm so skeptical about doomsday predictions such as global warming. I've been reading science fiction novels since childhood, almost all of which have end-the-world or near post-apocalyptic scenarios that were supposed to overtake us by the new millennium. Then there's the aircars and soybean burgers. Smell the cliches!

But eventually I just switched over to thinking of this as alternate history rather than future history--and it really does have an original premise: people can surgically recover the memory of their past lives. The novel follows three such people: Caroline, a woman with a dying child; Robbie, a thief, and Joe, a lawyer still troubled by his failed marriage. I liked the way they connect up with each other--and how, eventually, the recovery of their past lives connect up with Kress' imagined future.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started out with a quite interesting concept: Three people go in for "Past Life Access Surgery" and find that they were all connected in their past lives. Unfortunately, the entire first half was taken up in the introductions of the characters, none of whom are terribly likable, and then once things started to get interesting, a truly unfathomable concept is introduced involving the "key to the overmemory" and what that means for all mankind and how that might relate to God. I still don't think I understand this book. Generally, I enjoy Nancy Kress, particularly her Beggars trilogy, but I think with this she was reaching too hard for a concept that never quite got fleshed out.

[Elizabeth Hunter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written in 1990, much of Kress' extrapolation here is based on events from that time, which dates it somewhat. The idea of integrating past lives was fascinating, but never quite fully explored and the big climax sort of fizzled, without much effect beyond the characters involved. In the end, this feels more like a character study than a fully realized concept.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book shortly after it was published, so about 30 years ago, however; it has stuck with me much more so than most sci-fi books. Not that the book is a masterpiece by any means, but Kress worked with a few pretty interesting ideals in the work. One that has really stuck with me over the years was the corporate religion she described in the book. It was a response to environmentalism, premised on the ideal that the Earth could self-correct any damage done to it by mankind. So it served as a worship of "mother Earth" while at the same time absolving humanity from its responsibilities of stewardship. I also liked the ideal she had about why organized religion might be so categorically opposed to people remembering past lives - I stop there so as not to leave a spoiler.

All in all the book was a good read with more than the normal amount of intriguing ideals as found in your typical sci-fi work. After reading this book I tracked down a few other works of Kress. I did not love Beggers in Spain (which seems to be her best regarded work) but absolutely loved An Alien Light. Very high recommendation for that work.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought that Brain Rose started with an interesting premise - a surgery one can undergo that will let them tap into the "overmemory", a collective repository of humanity's memories, and see those memories through the eyes of one's ancestor. Unfortunately, Kress never really does anything interesting with this premise, and the story falls flat.

Beyond that, I just flat out didn't like any of the characters in this story, and found it hard to even empathize with them. They all were varying degrees of selfish and sociopathic, and it just left me feeling very apathetic about what happened to any of them.

Top that all off with a setting that is full of people with troubling and outdated (even for the 90s, in which the book was written) worldviews on queer people, climate change, religion, and politics, and what you end up with is a book that just didn't resonate with me.

[Andi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I first read this book as a teenager in the 90s and the premise has always stuck with me. Twenty-five years later, I decided to reread it. There's something interesting —sort of self-referential—about reading a book centered on questions of memory for a second time, so many years later. The world is a different place, as am I, and my understanding and reactions to the book have changed. I felt a little like the characters, remembering thoughts from a different version of myself.

If you happened to have also read this book 25 years ago, I highly recommend a reread. It's a five star experience. If you're new to the book, I give it 2.5 stars. It has a fascinating premise and I think we can learn a lot about ourselves and society by reading dated visions of the future.

[Richp · Rating 2 out of 5]

This ends up being a mediocre thriller based on a premise that totally lacks an explanation. I agree with the review that perceived this as an interesting setup wasted by the author not knowing what to do with it.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars because Nancy Kress’s characterization is always really good. This books wrapped up before fleshing our its premise fully, so it feels half-done.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great writing. Fantastic concept. But ends with a pretentious whimper that never quite coelesces the way it should.

[Sandy Carmichael · Rating 2 out of 5]

A sci-fi around re-incarnation; good plot but ending left me confused.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing premise, well written, ending totally does not work for me.

[Robert Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

--Three people that have had no former connection are at a private hospital to receive Previous Life Access Surgery. Caroline Bohentin, a socialite reporter; Joe McLaren, a DC lawyer and Robbie Brekke, pretty boy thug find their past lives eternally intertwined. A lot of relived scenes.--

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I'd really only like to give this book 2.5 stars if I could. I guess that's what happens when you decide you like a particular author so much that you want to read everything she's written -- you're bound to come across some that are not quite as good as the others.

This is one of Kress' early works, and it doesn't age well. It's dated -- not the science fiction, but the facts on which it's based. The book was published in 1989, and the characters (and Kress herself?) assume that gays were in some way the actual source of the AIDS virus.

I also found the ending a little unsatisfying. The whole book seemed to be working up to something that I couldn't quite make sense of. The religious analogies being used to wrap everything up were rather unclear.

But, as always, Kress' characters are fascinating to get to know, and in the course of their lives, they face complex moral challenges. Worth reading, but by far not the author's best work.

[Jim Mcclanahan · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of Nancy Kress' earlier works, this story deals with a latter day plague which robs victims of their ability to reason and undergo cognitive experiences. Instead, they ruminate over the same experiences day after day. In addition, an experimental group is using brain surgery to evoke "past lives" and have them become a part of the subject's persona. These two parallel happenings become intertwined in an interesting and sometimes unexpected way. A precursor (not a prequel) for Beggars In Spain

[Barbara Trail · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this because I love her short fiction, and Beggars in Spain.

This started out well- I tolerated the homophobia, because it was a realistic extrapolation of the public mood of the time (thankfully not realised), but the second half of the book was a huge letdown. The story fizzled and at the end I was glad to put it down.

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Competent, but not anything I'm adding to my list of permanent favorites.

[Regina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, but found it a little dull. Was a summer read from a tiny library, better than I expected though.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dated. It's Nancy Kress, so of course it's well written and has interesting characters. I'd probably have given it more stars when it was new, but it hasn't aged well. Too many outdated premises.