You Will Never Be Forgotten

by Mary South

In this provocative, bitingly funny debut collection, people attempt to use technology to escape their uncontrollable feelings of grief or rage or despair, only to reveal their most flawed and human selves

An architect draws questionable inspiration from her daughter’s birth defect. A content moderator for “the world’s biggest search engine,” who spends her days culling videos of beheadings and suicides, turns from stalking her rapist online to following him in real life. At a camp for recovering internet trolls, a sensitive misfit goes missing. A wounded mother raises the second incarnation of her child.

In You Will Never Be Forgotten, Mary South explores how technology can both collapse our relationships from within and provide opportunities for genuine connection. Formally inventive, darkly absurdist, savagely critical of the increasingly fraught cultural climates we inhabit, these ten stories also find hope in fleeting interactions and moments of tenderness. They reveal our grotesque selfishness and our intense need for love and acceptance, and the psychic pain that either shuts us off or allows us to discover our deepest reaches of empathy. This incendiary debut marks the arrival of a perceptive, idiosyncratic, instantly recognizable voice in fiction—one that could only belong to Mary South.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Science Fiction, Literary Fiction, Humor, Short Story Collection

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 2020

About the author

Mary South is the author of YOU WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN, which was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize and longlisted for The Story Prize. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Guernica, NOON, and elsewhere.

Reviews

[Emily B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection. I can’t put my finger on exactly why but they were my cup of tea for sure. I loved their modernity their unusualness and slightly absurdness. A clever collection for sure

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection was very much not for me – and I had been close to just putting it down, when the third story (Frequently Asked Questions About Your Craniotomy) was just brilliant and I spent the rest of my reading time chasing that high (which never came). South takes already uncomfortable premises and somehow makes them worse – and I do not like fiction that makes me feel like I need to take a shower. I admit that this is very much a me-thing and looking at other reviews made that very clear – there is a lot to love here, if you don’t mind sitting with discomfort.

I left the collection wondering if South does like the internet, at all, or even people, for that matter. Most of her premises lean into the possibility of technology making everything worse, while most her protagonists are genuinely awful people, or at least people at the whim of other horrible people. Her men are self-involved and rarely able to look outside their own problems, her women are often victim of either their own bodies or patriarchy. I did not enjoy my time with this book as it was way too bleak and hopeless for me.

Content warnings: rape, miscarriage, SIDS, trolling, depiction of graphic violence, killing of a cat, alcohol and drug abuse, fat shaming, death of loved ones, stalking, cheating

I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had wanted to read Mary South's debut collection of stories since first hearing about the US edition, and was delighted to discover the book had found a UK publisher. What I'd read about Forgotten – such as the blurb, which says the stories involve people attempting 'to use technology to escape their uncontrollable feelings of grief or rage or despair' – had given me the impression it would be near-future soft science fiction in the vein of Alexander Weinstein. The opening story seems to have been chosen to underscore that positioning: 'Keith Prime' is narrated by a nurse who must ensure her wards, a group of clones named Keith, are safely kept sedated until their organs are harvested. However, it isn't necessarily typical of the collection, and that mention of 'technology' turns out to be a lazy way to sum it up.

I'd compare South's work to Xuan Juliana Wang, Lauren Holmes, Jen George and Kristen Roupenian. She's good at unnerving, offputting premises – if not quite body horror, then certainly bodily squeamishness, as in 'The Promised Hostel', where the narrator is one of a group of adult men who take turns breastfeeding from a woman called Maddy. Some are so up-to-the-minute that the concepts might sound a little too calculated: in the title story, a content moderator stalks her rapist online; 'To Save the Universe, We Must Also Save Ourselves' uses the members of an online fan forum as a kind of Greek chorus. Both, however, are razor-sharp. The latter, especially, is a really smart way to portray the way pop culture icons are built up, torn down and dehumanised.

Another couple of standouts: my favourite, 'Architecture for Monsters', is about a 'starchitect' whose work references human anatomy. Parts of it are written as a pitch-perfect imitation of the sort of profile that might appear in a pretentious design magazine (complete with footnotes), and the style is so enjoyable it'd be a pleasure even if it didn't have the best plot in the book. In 'The Age of Love' two staff at a nursing home discover their elderly patients are addicted to phone sex lines, and start making recordings of the calls – a practice that backfires when the narrator's girlfriend falls for the voice of a particularly eloquent octogenarian. Both are pretty funny in what appears to be a dry and deadpan way, yet there's real emotion beneath that. This is a hallmark of the whole book, and particularly apparent in its strongest stories.

I received an advance review copy of You Will Never Be Forgotten from the publisher through NetGalley.

TinyLetter

[☆LaurA☆ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mi sento abbastanza in conflitto questa volta. Questa raccolta di racconti non ha mantenuto le aspettative che le avevo riposto.

Esploriamo la solitudine, la rabbia, il dolore e lo scappare da una vita reale attraverso la tecnologia.
Che possa essere l'uso di linee erotiche da parte di vecchietti come sostituto alla solitudine o una fabbrica di essere umani usati come ricambi per corpi malati.
Le premesse c'erano tutte porca paletta.
Credevo davvero avesse la possibilità di colpirmi di più, credevo di riuscire ad immergermi completamente in alcune delle storie, ma così non è stato.
Alcuni racconti meritano, altri davvero non li consiglierei mai.


"Abbiamo app per la consegna di piatti gourmet, app per il lavaggio della nostra biancheria chiazzata di merda, app per la ricerca di genitali freschi da scopare, app per battere i nostri pari postando fotografie delle nostre vite filtrate ma praticamente nessuna app che permetta incontri casuali senza alcuna prospettiva di ricompensa".....volevo di più da te Mary South, probabilmente io NON mi ricorderò di te.

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong and darkly funny collection of short stories that, in some ways, toe the line between contemporary and speculative, and in other ways, are just the embodiments of the humor and depravity of technology’s implications on humans relationships with one another. Worth reading if you enjoyed We Had To Remove This Post or Several People Are Typing.

3.5

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 rounded down

The stories I enjoyed in this collection were great, and South's writing shows a lot of promise. But too many of them left me wanting more from the plot and feeling dissatisfied. (It's also always unfortunate when the short stories you enjoy are towards the front of the book...)

I'd suggest reading the titular story to see if this'll be your thing, and despite my misgivings I suspect many readers will love this selection of offbeat stories.

[Tatevik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Our lives are upside down because of Internet and social media. Not bad, not good. Just upside down.

[Emma Eisenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, smart sexy story collection. A fascinating and modern look at how we live now

[Mark Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

You Will Never Be Forgotten by Mary South

'Conceptualizing nothingness is difficult'

Debut sharp absurdist literary fiction awash with gallows humour, upending the usual and the humdrum.

South has a meticulous eye for the mundanity of the every day, and a limitless creativity in inverting it - a shrewd awareness of the dangers of the human need for control via the use of technology.

Each of these stories uses the medium of technology in some way to illustrate the complexities of loss, hope, grief, lust, love, identity. The list could go on.

Ultimately, You Will Never Be Forgotten is an illustratration of the interspersal of technology and inherent human emotion; confonting their ambiguity and intricacies as their darker sides mingle with the promise of something pure and fulfilling.


A dystopian warehouse full of genetically modified people all named Keith. An old people's home where the residents call sex hotlines, partly for sexual gratification, mainly to expel loneliness. A rehabilitation camp for internet trolls.

Some of the beauty of South's writing lies in her choice of words. Words that aren't used nearly enough, and which until seeing them in this collection I'd either forgotten existed, or couldn't define without Google. Yet here these words are decorated in her prose effortlessly. For example:

Doyenne
Lambasted 
Gambrel (as in a style of roof)
Temerity (as in excessive confidence)
Paramour (illicit partner of a married person)
Progenitor (as in an ancestor or parent)
Facsimile (which is very difficult to spell)

And to demonstrate the quality of her writing further. This passage from 'architecture for monsters' is powerful -

'The house is a regression to precognition, to lying in her michigan backyard as a child and staring up at sheets breezy on the line. It is an homage to laundry, weeds, naming clouds after the animals they resemble, power lines, suburbia, reverie'.

This is hands down the best short-story collection I've read this year. South has such a unique approach to storytelling. It's incredibly moreish.

[Radwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories here center on using internet, technology and social media in a world that's eerily similar to ours but with one difference or another.

1- Keith Prime: this was chilling. it takes place in amazon-like facility, where each facility packages and care for clones (I assume, for organs harvesting), and the nurses or people working there care for the bodies in their eternal sleep, as they never wake up, but one of them does. it combines the main character's grief over the loss of her husband with dealing with this child-like man-clone. weird and intriguing and scary.

2- The Age of Love: this was just sad. dealing with old people in their nursing homes, and the conflict they have with their young caretakers. it's not a conflict per se, more like the young people find it within their right to ridicule the needs of these older people and how they continue to do the same things the young people do.

3- Frequently Asked Questions About Your Crainotomy: in the form of questions and answers, it starts as a somewhat helpful guide for patinets to know more about the procedure and turn personal regarding the doctor writing the answers. it's extremly sad and depressing.

4- Architecture for Monsters: uhh, I didn't get this one. two woman and the daughter that might be the daughter of any of them and the woman interviewing one of these two women and their lives. it just was a stream of words that didn't clock together

5- The Promised Hostel: uhh, another weird one. we're in a hostel where several backpackers are breastfeeding from the same woman? and we follow her brother who has a weird infatuation with her? this has it all: incest, toxic masculanity, whatever the hell you call adult men acting like children and sharing one woman and breastfeeding from her. there's some deep meanings about family and motherhood and sibling jealousy and being an orphan/alone/excluded from your family here, but I couldn't get past the weirdness.

6- You Will Never Be Forgotten: a life of social media nightmare, alongside the story of a rape survivor following her rapist and seeing him live life in full light while she's living in the shadows. triggering and devastating. but I get the message. you have to clean your life yourself, as no one is there for you.

7- Camp Jabberwocky For Recovering Internet Trolls: three counselers at a summer camp for internet trolls look for a runaway trolls and we hear from each one about their life, their relationship with trolls/bullies online and in real life and social media, and also their relationship with that specific troll. had some insightful and thought-provoking ideas

8- To Save the Universe, We Must also Save Ourselves: I mean, she nails the inner workings of fangirls and fanboys and the weird world of fandoms we live in, with its obsession and possessiveness of fans of a shaow that feels similar to "Firefly".

9- Realtor to the Damned: this one was sad and really got to me. a realtor loses his wife and remembers how they used to make up stories about the poeple whose hoses they sold. about ghosts, loss and grief

10- Not Setsuko: trigger warning for animal death. truly horrifying story about a mother who can't accept her daughter's death, so she allows herself to get a redo.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edgy and contemporary. Good collection if a bit scary.

[fatma · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Accustomed to spending such long intervals in echoed spaces, we both tended to forget how the essence of work lingered with us."

You Will Never Be Forgotten is an ambitious, timely collection of short stories that, at its heart, is about relationships: between caretakers and patients, mothers and daughters, interviewers and interviewees, the dead and the bereft. Throughout the collection, these relationships take on different inflections as they intersect with their particular settings. "The Age of Love" looks at aging, sex, and romantic relationships in the context of a nursing home; "To Save the Universe, We Must Also Save Ourselves" is an exploration of parasocial relationships, told in the first-person plural voice of the fandom of an actress in a Star Trek-esque sci-fi show; "Camp Jabberwocky For Recovering Internet Trolls" is about exactly that: a camp for kids whose use of the internet has turned malicious. Some of the stories tend towards more realist territory while others take a more speculative bent; either way, these are all stories that take a premise and examine it in a grounded, focused way.

All of this is to say: South's stories are various in both content and form. I want to specifically focus on the latter as I think this collection takes structural risks in telling a lot of its stories. One story, "Architecture for Monsters" is written as an article by a journalist at once preoccupied with and fascinated by an elusive celebrity architect. Another, and my favourite, "Frequently Asked Questions About Your Craniotomy," begins as an ostensible set of answers to craniotomy-related FAQs but develops into a moving story about grief with a distinct, memorable narrative voice. (My other favourites were the titular story, "You Will Never Be Forgotten" and "Not Setsuko.")

PS: You can read some of the stories from this collection online! You can listen to Mary South read "You Will Never Be Forgotten" here as well as read an excerpt of "Not Setsuko" here.

[Emma Jessie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was such a pain to get through. I hate not finishing books as I really want to give them a full chance, but this one just did not get better... at all. The entire book felt disturbingly disconnected from the author and rather impersonal. Rather than feeling the author’s heart and soul in this book, we instead see pretty much everything that’s in vogue right now. It was as if she was trying to check off all the boxes as to what’s chic in modern lit. This book painstakingly reminded me of all of the stories I did NOT look forward to reading in undergraduate writing workshops. I do not recommend this book.

[Diletta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Racconti che rileggerei adesso, di nuovo e altre cento volte, un paio invece un po' deboli. Nel complesso il tipico libro che potrebbe diventare una serie antologica Netflix solo che Netflix avrebbe paura e quindi appiattirebbe tutto.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In the modern world, you might be easily forgotten, but you could also carve out your own niche.” In the 10 stories of this debut collection, characters turn to technology to stake a claim on originality, compensate for their losses, and leave a legacy. In “Keith Prime,” a widowed nurse works at a warehouse that produces unconscious specimens for organ harvesting. When her favorite Keith wakes up, she agrees to raise him at home, but human development and emotional connection are inconveniences in a commodity.

The narrator of “FAQs about Your Craniotomy” is a female brain surgeon who starts out by giving literal answers to potential patient questions and then segues into bitterly funny reflections on life after her husband’s suicide. In “Architecture for Monsters,” a young woman interviews Helen Dannenforth, a formidable female architect whose designs are inspired by anatomy, specifically by her disabled daughter’s condition. The narrator’s mother, a molecular biologist, was assaulted and murdered by a lab technician. Dannenforth is a hero/replacement mother figure to her, even after she learns about the complicated situation with the architect’s sister, who was the surrogate for her niece but then got cut out of the child’s life.

I particularly liked “The Age of Love,” a funny one in which the nurses at a nursing home listen in to their elderly patients’ calls to phone sex lines. Their conversations aren’t about smut so much as they’re about loneliness and nostalgia. Another favorite of mine was “Camp Jabberwocky for Recovering Internet Trolls,” about a Martha’s Vineyard camp for teens who need a better relationship with social media. When camper Rex Hasselbach, who had posted foul content in his father’s name to get revenge on being beaten up at home, goes missing, three counselors with guilt or identity issues of their own go looking for him. The title story also engages with social media as a woman obsessively tracks her rapist and works as a “digital media curator” deleting distressing video content.

All of the characters have had a bereavement or other traumatic incident and are looking for the best way to move on, but some make bizarre and unhealthy decisions – such as to restage events from a dead daughter’s life, to breastfeed grown men, or to communicate by text with a deceased wife. These quirky, humorous stories never strayed so far into science fiction as to alienate me. I loved the medical themes and the subtle, incisive observations about a technology-obsessed culture. I’ll be looking out for what Mary South does next.

[Jessica Klahr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am confident this will be my favorite story collection of the year. These are my favorite kinds of stories where the author observed something odd or absurd about society and flips it or enlarged it and runs with it. A lot of the press for this book said it focused on technology, but really there were only a couple stories that fit that bill. I found myself being so impressed with this author’s imagination as I was going through these stories and I can’t wait to see what she would do with a novel format. Some favorites included: age of love, where a man finds that the elderly he serves at a convalescent hospital have started to call phone sex lines, architecture for monsters, a profile of sorts that centers on a famous female architect who designs conceptual buildings as well as some of her family secrets, the promised hostel, where several men run away from their lives to the Middle East to stay at a hostel/resort where they take turns breast feeding from the main characters former lover, camp jabberwocky for recovering internet trolls, where the main character is a camp counselor at a summer camp for teens who abuse strangers online and he must search for a fellow counselor who goes missing, who is apparently the biggest troll of them all. My favorite story was the last one, not setsuko, which follows a woman who loses her 9 year old daughter tragically, and when she becomes pregnant again believes the new daughter is setsuko reincarnated and treats her as such, and also includes the set of a horror movie. I loved this collection and I’m so glad I purchased this one from bookshop.org and can return to these stories again and again.

[Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly weird stories. Here is a relatively normal sentence within these fictional worlds: "Maddy doesn't appear entirely human as she stands up to her crotch in the Mediterranean." Time, bodies, relationships have different rules of engagement here. Also, very funny.

[n · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this really, weird and unsettling and inventive

[James R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t typically enjoy short story collections. The shorter format makes it harder to get absorbed in a story and jumping from one to another can feel disorienting. I’m glad I put aside my reservations and have Mary South’s collection a chance. I was rewarded by a range of stories that were a pleasure to read.

The stories vary in subject but there is a consistency across them that’s hard to pin down. Each has a similar feel, like they exist in that same world as each other which is much like our own but somehow different.

Mary South has a skill for taking an otherwise every day situation and adding an unusual twist to it that makes for an intriguing story. Often this involves a new piece of technology or a change in the way society works. I liked how these scenarios weren’t the real subject of the story, it was always the people in the stories that were the focus.

I’m pleased to have reached this far in the review without mentioning Black Mirror but it’s hard to talk about this book without drawing parallels to Charlie Brooker’s TV series. Both explore how messed up humans are through the prism of a near-future version of our world. Both share a fairly bleak view of the world that is made more palatable thanks to a black humour and relatable characters.

I really enjoyed reading these stories and would recommend You WilL Never Be Forgotten to anyone with a taste for dark short stories that are written with skill and real story-telling ability.

[G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unsettling. Couldn't even pause for a second to gather my thoughts.

[erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

i woulda given this 5 stars even if i didn’t know mary irl, it rules

[Ellis ♥ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recensione per Leggere Distopico & Fantascienza oggi! :)
https://www.leggeredistopico.com/2022...

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

The cover does nothing to prepare you for the contents. It’s such a reductively simplistic cover for such a complex and interesting collection. Then again, the last few pages are pure praise for it from respected authors, so maybe this is a book best judged by its rear end.
This was a fairly random selection for me from the library’s latest digital acquisitions. On par with a number of short story collections I’ve read recently in both tone and mood, this one dissects the technologically crippled modern age in a clever, humorous and morbid fashion. It’s almost science fictiony in a way, or at least Black Mirroresque, with scenarios ranging from warehouses of spare people to reconfigured children to cult show obsessions to camp for cybertrolls and more.
But it isn’t all out there, the scenarios range from somewhat futuristic to present day plausible. Though technology plays a crucial role each time, specifically the far reaching ramifications or it, the negative, the ugly, the scarring reach of oppressive interconnectivity. It isn’t overly moralistic as such things tend to be, in fact it veers more toward the absurd. Grotesque, at times. Original, viciously clever, erudite, darkly funny and very, very hip, these stories have much to offer, though personally my appreciation for them was much more cerebral than emotional. They aren’t just literary novelties, but any means, there’s plenty of substance here, but the entire production is so stylish that at times the style overwhelms the matter. It’s sort of…belletristic that way. Which gives me a chance to take that gorgeous word for a spin.
The overall effect creates a sort of storytelling that might be considered an acquired taste. But it’s such a smart stab at the modern mentality, it’s difficult not to enjoy on some level. Intellectually stimulating absurdist satire that’s very, very now with some genuinely striking sentence crafting. Reads quickly and worth checking out. Personal favorites were the second (also funniest) and the last (most Black Mirror like) stories. The ones least likely to be forgotten.

[Yuqi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every story was well-written and compulsively readable, even when I was cringing at the content. Ranking these stories from best to worst, this is the order I recommend reading them in.

You Will Never Be Forgotten
Favorite story. Dark AF. Had one line that made me laugh out loud and a great ending.

Not Setsuko
Last story in the collection. Great. Horror.

Architecture for Monsters
Best written. Full of writerly sentences that I highlighted. Best line: "The coroner folded open her skin like a map." Here's another: Hannah was scrupulously candid, as exposed as a decomposing shack in the wilderness."

The Age of Love.
Interesting at least. Involves old people and an unlikeable narrator. Plus this great exchange:
"Don't talk to Jill again, or I will make you regret it." "I shit my pants about five minutes ago. I'm going to need a change."

The Promised Hostel
This was so weird, I didn't like the narrator, but I still wanted to know how things would end. Best line: "What ultimately lets us move on is not acceptance but boredom."

To Save the Universe, We Must Also Save Ourselves
Bit of a jarring beginning. I wondered about the gender of the collective we voice throughout. Best line: "Beneath the troll bridge of their IP addresses, they grind their axes and fashion their memes." Here's another example of a great writerly sentence: "It is labia chic, what we suppose the inside of a vagina would look like if a vagina were a doctor's office."

Frequently Asked Questions About Your Craniotomy
Like a McSweeney's humor piece that goes on too long. I literally turned a few pages thinking, "Really?! There's more?!" It does start out strong though! Best line: "I've heard it feels as though you are watching your own handwriting uncoiling from someone else's pen."

Realtor to the Damned
Kept me interested in how the story would turn out, but forgettable after. The ending saves it. Best line: "A memory is altered each time it is recollected, so whenever I long for my wife I lose her more and more... what could be more ghostly than missing someone so intensely that you can no longer remember her as she was."

Camp Jabberwocky for Recovering Internet Trolls
Way too long, but had good sentences such that I could keep speeding through. Felt my brain melting a little as I read it. Best line: "Well, perhaps this was natural-the tempering of emotion with age-so that at the end of one's life, you might wander through the recollections of former loves as if through the graveyard of burned-out stars."

Keith Prime
I read this first, and I ended up putting down the collection for several days before returning to it. I thought, if the whole collection is like this story, there's no way I'll get through it! Luckily it's not.

[Jodi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked these stories, but didn't love them. As with much short fiction, they often left me feeling like I must have missed something. Stories without actual endings drive me a bit crazy.

This collection still rates at least 3 stars, though. It has interesting characters and some very unique situations in which they find themselves. I don't know that I'd recommend reading it, but I wouldn't try to talk anyone out of reading it, either. Mostly, I just think, "meh".

[Rachel León]

delightfully weird and well-written (such a great combo)

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd short stories are extremely my jam, and Mary South's are kind of Black-Mirror-meets-early-George-Saunders weird - stories that explore societal constructions through a technological lens. South does go a little deeper into these explorations than I feel other writers of short stories like this do. Her premises are out there, but they aren't the whole point of the story.

[Uriel Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkable collection in almost every way. The stories feel familiar and original at the same time, imbued with internet lingo and touchingly morbid.

[linn · Rating 3 out of 5]

truly the ?? strangest short story collection ive ever read ??????

(3.5/5)

[Alex Juarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly compelling short stories. Each distinct yet reflective of the full collection. Grief, the internet, and bad relationships are also my personal trifecta!

Loved “Keith Prime”, “The Age of Love” and “You Will Never Be Forgotten”