What do you think?
Rate this book
Minnesteatern
Det finns en värld vid sidan av vår egen. För härskarklassen är Trädgården ett dekadent paradis där tiden står stilla och festen aldrig tar slut. För barnen, deras tjänare och slavar, är det en utdragen skärseld där lek blir tortyr och ingen annan än de utvalda får överleva och bli gammal.
Dora och Tistel är som syskon, bästa vänner som bara har varandra – och nu måste de fly från Trädgården innan deras ungdom förråder dem. Det blir början på en hisnande resa mellan deras värld och vår. De två vännerna möter mystiska handelsmän och människor som gömmer sig inuti sig själva. Någonstans, sägs det, bortom vägskälet vid universums mitt, finns ett resande teatersällskap som kan låsa upp verkligheten. Är det nyckeln till Dora och Tistels frihet?
"Minnesteatern" är en mörk saga som utspelar sig bortom tid och rum. Den är den första romanen på svenska på ett decennium för Karin Tidbeck, en av våra internationellt mest uppmärksammade författare.
Dora och Tistel är som syskon, bästa vänner som bara har varandra – och nu måste de fly från Trädgården innan deras ungdom förråder dem. Det blir början på en hisnande resa mellan deras värld och vår. De två vännerna möter mystiska handelsmän och människor som gömmer sig inuti sig själva. Någonstans, sägs det, bortom vägskälet vid universums mitt, finns ett resande teatersällskap som kan låsa upp verkligheten. Är det nyckeln till Dora och Tistels frihet?
"Minnesteatern" är en mörk saga som utspelar sig bortom tid och rum. Den är den första romanen på svenska på ett decennium för Karin Tidbeck, en av våra internationellt mest uppmärksammade författare.
250 pages, Hardcover
First published February 16, 2021
131 people are currently reading
13129 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 518 reviews
February 26, 2021
wonderland-meets-neverland with more prescriptive scarification and cannibalism.
this is a fantastic read from a very dark imagination. the story-elements are almost too bonkers to type out: dora is a girl who is sometimes a rock, birthed outta the earth for a wanna-be father who very quickly didn't wanna-be a father no more. abandoned & anomalous, she spends her days in the company of thistle, a boy she has come to regard as an adopted brother. thistle lost his true name when he was kidnapped from his/our world, led across dimensions and forced into servitude—an attendant to the masters of a twisted fairytale place known as the gardens. here, time stands still—for the masters, anyway—who enjoy a neverending cycle of croquet, feasts, and hedonistic revelries; never aging, never remembering anything beyond the pleasures of the moment. less fortunate are their mortal servants like thistle, who suffer horrible punishments for minor infractions and are killed when they get too old. and thistle, although doing his best to disguise it, is getting too old.
there's also a purple lady named ghorbi who trades and travels and makes wishes come true...for a price, porla the fish lady and her pet corpse, a kindly pair of vittra, a powerful librarian-entity, mysterious hooded beings who preside over the crossroads between dimensions, and a troupe of actors who perform the stories of all the worlds, empathy-chameleons* who can permeate their borders.
it's got all the traits and trappings of a fairytale—the creatures, the journeys, the tests, the power of names, and it's beautifully melancholic when it's not being a straight-up gleeful bloodbath.
augusta is a terrific villain who would be great friends with jill from seanan mcguire's wayward children series while dora was hanging out with the rock-narrator of The Raven Tower. and while i'm here recklessly namedropping other things, even though i stupidly haven’t read Piranesi yet, i get the sense that it might sorta be a gentler flipside of this story. we'll see how accurate my book-spidey senses are about this whenever i get around to reading it.
* figurative, although literal empathy-chameleons would fit right in here
*************************************
i won a book! but since it pubs on tuesday, you will probably get the chance to read it before i do, so no spoilers please!
review coming, i promise!
come to my blog!
this is a fantastic read from a very dark imagination. the story-elements are almost too bonkers to type out: dora is a girl who is sometimes a rock, birthed outta the earth for a wanna-be father who very quickly didn't wanna-be a father no more. abandoned & anomalous, she spends her days in the company of thistle, a boy she has come to regard as an adopted brother. thistle lost his true name when he was kidnapped from his/our world, led across dimensions and forced into servitude—an attendant to the masters of a twisted fairytale place known as the gardens. here, time stands still—for the masters, anyway—who enjoy a neverending cycle of croquet, feasts, and hedonistic revelries; never aging, never remembering anything beyond the pleasures of the moment. less fortunate are their mortal servants like thistle, who suffer horrible punishments for minor infractions and are killed when they get too old. and thistle, although doing his best to disguise it, is getting too old.
there's also a purple lady named ghorbi who trades and travels and makes wishes come true...for a price, porla the fish lady and her pet corpse, a kindly pair of vittra, a powerful librarian-entity, mysterious hooded beings who preside over the crossroads between dimensions, and a troupe of actors who perform the stories of all the worlds, empathy-chameleons* who can permeate their borders.
it's got all the traits and trappings of a fairytale—the creatures, the journeys, the tests, the power of names, and it's beautifully melancholic when it's not being a straight-up gleeful bloodbath.
augusta is a terrific villain who would be great friends with jill from seanan mcguire's wayward children series while dora was hanging out with the rock-narrator of The Raven Tower. and while i'm here recklessly namedropping other things, even though i stupidly haven’t read Piranesi yet, i get the sense that it might sorta be a gentler flipside of this story. we'll see how accurate my book-spidey senses are about this whenever i get around to reading it.
* figurative, although literal empathy-chameleons would fit right in here
*************************************
i won a book! but since it pubs on tuesday, you will probably get the chance to read it before i do, so no spoilers please!
review coming, i promise!
come to my blog!
November 4, 2020
Two things up top. 1) I would like to find whoever is responsible for bringing Karin Tidbeck to the US and shake their hand heartily. 2) For readers/reviewers I want to note Tidbeck uses she/her and they/them pronouns.
I was bowled over by Tidbeck's novel AMATKA, a speculative dystopian novel that felt different from any other dystopian novel I'd ever read. I loved it enough to happily read THE MEMORY THEATER, which is much more of a fairy-tale-esque fantasy, which is normally not a genre I have any interest in. I devoured it in about a day.
Besides Tidbeck, all of the Scandinavian fiction in translation that comes my way are rather gruesome thrillers. But Tidbeck incorporates that bleakness into the fantastical in all kinds of ways. This feels quite different from their two previous books, but I am also not surprised it's the same writer. Clearly they have a vast imagination and I'm hopeful we have even more books in translation to come. (Tidbeck also does their own translating!)
The fairy tale feeling is undeniable here, but it's also the dark and violent kind of old fairy tales. Many an unlucky soul is lost along the way. Our protagonists, Thistle and Dora, are trying to escape a particularly horrible magical world. Along the way we find ourselves not just in the Gardens, where god-like beings torture their servants to serve their never-ending party, but also the real world, where beings who know more of magic than anything else have to cope. And, of course, there is the titular Memory Theater, a troupe of actors who play out the lived stories of all kinds of souls.
The length here is just right, letting you dance along the surface of these worlds while still getting you full satisfaction from the story.
Note: plenty of violence, including violence against children.
I was bowled over by Tidbeck's novel AMATKA, a speculative dystopian novel that felt different from any other dystopian novel I'd ever read. I loved it enough to happily read THE MEMORY THEATER, which is much more of a fairy-tale-esque fantasy, which is normally not a genre I have any interest in. I devoured it in about a day.
Besides Tidbeck, all of the Scandinavian fiction in translation that comes my way are rather gruesome thrillers. But Tidbeck incorporates that bleakness into the fantastical in all kinds of ways. This feels quite different from their two previous books, but I am also not surprised it's the same writer. Clearly they have a vast imagination and I'm hopeful we have even more books in translation to come. (Tidbeck also does their own translating!)
The fairy tale feeling is undeniable here, but it's also the dark and violent kind of old fairy tales. Many an unlucky soul is lost along the way. Our protagonists, Thistle and Dora, are trying to escape a particularly horrible magical world. Along the way we find ourselves not just in the Gardens, where god-like beings torture their servants to serve their never-ending party, but also the real world, where beings who know more of magic than anything else have to cope. And, of course, there is the titular Memory Theater, a troupe of actors who play out the lived stories of all kinds of souls.
The length here is just right, letting you dance along the surface of these worlds while still getting you full satisfaction from the story.
Note: plenty of violence, including violence against children.
January 13, 2021
3.5 stars. Lovely prose. A strange and folkloric fairy tale about the fabric of reality. I struggled a little with picturing some of the more metaphoric ideas but it was very worth reading.
July 24, 2024
I really liked this unusual book. It is drama, saga, fairy tale, fantasy and a very enjoyable read.
July 18, 2023
Remember when Harry Styles said "My favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie"? I would like to rephrase his iconic quote and say: my favourite thing about this story is that it, like, feels like a story.
The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck is a novel for anyone who loves storytelling: it's a book steeped in storytelling, about the power of stories, about how we construct stories, about what kinds of stories we tell and who we include in them. It's a hard novel to pin down because it is so distinctly itself--it sort of feels like a fable, with a mix of magical realism, fantasy, fairy-tale-ness, and adventure--but most importantly to me, it's a novel that never loses sight of its characters, always compassionate and sensitive to their loneliness, their need for connection (the found family!!! 🥺). For this reason, it's also such an affirming and heartwarming read; it's not about some kind of conceptual exploration of stories, but about why stories are sustenance, the ways they enliven and sustain people and their ties to each other.
The best compliment I can give The Memory Theater is that it feels like a fairytale for adults (not the sunshine-and-rainbows Disney fairytales, but the darker original fairytales): it's both sweeping and specific, adventurous and grounded. It's a real hidden gem, and I would love to see more people check it out.
The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck is a novel for anyone who loves storytelling: it's a book steeped in storytelling, about the power of stories, about how we construct stories, about what kinds of stories we tell and who we include in them. It's a hard novel to pin down because it is so distinctly itself--it sort of feels like a fable, with a mix of magical realism, fantasy, fairy-tale-ness, and adventure--but most importantly to me, it's a novel that never loses sight of its characters, always compassionate and sensitive to their loneliness, their need for connection (the found family!!! 🥺). For this reason, it's also such an affirming and heartwarming read; it's not about some kind of conceptual exploration of stories, but about why stories are sustenance, the ways they enliven and sustain people and their ties to each other.
The best compliment I can give The Memory Theater is that it feels like a fairytale for adults (not the sunshine-and-rainbows Disney fairytales, but the darker original fairytales): it's both sweeping and specific, adventurous and grounded. It's a real hidden gem, and I would love to see more people check it out.
April 25, 2021
And here it finally is: my first 5-star novel read of the 2021 releases.
I already loved Tidbeck's Amatka and I was enthralled by The Memory Theater as well. This time Tidbeck goes for a fairy tale story, but one of the cruel kind (warning, there are some very brutal scenes). The precise prose and the weird elements perfect this tale of a boy who wants to find his name and a woman who wants to return to her own paradise while murdering everybody in her way who isn't helpful.
Surreal, weird, creative and bold - exactly what I love in a good book.
I already loved Tidbeck's Amatka and I was enthralled by The Memory Theater as well. This time Tidbeck goes for a fairy tale story, but one of the cruel kind (warning, there are some very brutal scenes). The precise prose and the weird elements perfect this tale of a boy who wants to find his name and a woman who wants to return to her own paradise while murdering everybody in her way who isn't helpful.
Surreal, weird, creative and bold - exactly what I love in a good book.
December 8, 2021
Actual rating: 3.5 stars
The Memory Theater has a lot to offer readers. It's well written, whimsical, and original in so many ways. I loved the mashup of fantasy and the multiverse. My biggest complaint about the book was that it was very anticlimactic. Everything is told in a very 'matter of fact' way and this left something to be desired. Overall, I liked the book and I would definitely read something by this author again.
The Memory Theater has a lot to offer readers. It's well written, whimsical, and original in so many ways. I loved the mashup of fantasy and the multiverse. My biggest complaint about the book was that it was very anticlimactic. Everything is told in a very 'matter of fact' way and this left something to be desired. Overall, I liked the book and I would definitely read something by this author again.
March 21, 2021
This book is completely gorgeous and also a total nightmare. It feels like an old school Grimm's fairy tale with hints of Narnia, Adventure Time, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Pan's Labyrinth. I loved it.
August 8, 2021
This is a short fantasy novel by Karin Tidbeck, the author from Sweden writing in English. Previously I’ve read their book Amatka at Speculative Fiction in Translation group and I found it strange but interesting, my review is here. This time I read this 2021 as a part of monthly reading for August 2021 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. It is a strong work, but I doubt that it gains enough popularity to compete with USA based authors for SFF awards, which is sad.
The story starts in a fairytale land, called simply Gardens (an allusion to the garden of Eden among other things), were fae re-live a day again and again, feasting and playing. In order to have servants, they, like in fairytales, steal kids. One of such kids is Thistle, who cannot leave because his true name (and memories) was stolen and who is old enough to become a prey for fae’s hunt. He befriended Dora, born of mountain and gifted to a fae’s king by mysterious stranger. Names play an important role in the story, both the search for them and allusions they bring. Say, Dora is from Greek Δώρα, meaning a gift and she was gifted to the king. Also, Dora was the name of one of just three giant railroad 800-mm cannons, and in the book she has a strength of a giant.
As can be expected, Dora and Thistle were able to escape, and during their travels, they meet the memory theatre, which gave the book its title. The theater plays stories and they become reality. Also there is an evil (sometimes over the top) fae lady that tries to find Dora and Thistle, leaving a trail of dead bodies…
A very interesting read, weird fantasy, based more or fairytales than on The Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King and his inheritors which is mainstream fantasy today.
The story starts in a fairytale land, called simply Gardens (an allusion to the garden of Eden among other things), were fae re-live a day again and again, feasting and playing. In order to have servants, they, like in fairytales, steal kids. One of such kids is Thistle, who cannot leave because his true name (and memories) was stolen and who is old enough to become a prey for fae’s hunt. He befriended Dora, born of mountain and gifted to a fae’s king by mysterious stranger. Names play an important role in the story, both the search for them and allusions they bring. Say, Dora is from Greek Δώρα, meaning a gift and she was gifted to the king. Also, Dora was the name of one of just three giant railroad 800-mm cannons, and in the book she has a strength of a giant.
As can be expected, Dora and Thistle were able to escape, and during their travels, they meet the memory theatre, which gave the book its title. The theater plays stories and they become reality. Also there is an evil (sometimes over the top) fae lady that tries to find Dora and Thistle, leaving a trail of dead bodies…
A very interesting read, weird fantasy, based more or fairytales than on The Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King and his inheritors which is mainstream fantasy today.
April 12, 2021
Odd, melancholic, violent, horrifying…. These are all words that came to mind at various times while reading Karin Tidbeck’s Memory Theatre. The story deals with multiverses, and a pair of young people, one of whom is desperate to return home to his world, the other accompanying him to protect him. The two live in a world populated by decadent, cruel, beautiful people; young Thistle was brought here when younger to serve the adults. Dora was created here, and looks out for Thistle, which is important as the adults have a bad habit of abusing and murdering and eating their adolescent servants on whims.
This is a world of endless parties, coupled with much cruelty, murder and cannibalism. Who wouldn’t want to serve these powerful beings till they grew bored or irritated, and made you into pretty little meat cakes?
Thistle and Dora manage to escape eventually and follow one of the adults out, and go on a hunt for Thistle’s name, which will allow him to find his way home; along the way, travel through several odd places and meet some odder people.
The crossroads between different worlds and times was an interesting idea, and the strangeness that suffused this story made this an unusual book, and kept me a little off balance, even while I could appreciate the inventiveness of the story.
This is a world of endless parties, coupled with much cruelty, murder and cannibalism. Who wouldn’t want to serve these powerful beings till they grew bored or irritated, and made you into pretty little meat cakes?
Thistle and Dora manage to escape eventually and follow one of the adults out, and go on a hunt for Thistle’s name, which will allow him to find his way home; along the way, travel through several odd places and meet some odder people.
The crossroads between different worlds and times was an interesting idea, and the strangeness that suffused this story made this an unusual book, and kept me a little off balance, even while I could appreciate the inventiveness of the story.
May 3, 2021
I have very conflicted feelings about this one. I was bored, and at the same time I wanted to see what happened. I did not feel it was as good as her other book. I would not really recommend it either, and still I wanted to see how it turned out.
Some people got together and managed to create an alternate dimension, no, they created a space in an already alternate dimension. A pocket they can't leave. A Garden where the same day happen again and again. And they turn cruel and kidnap children to use as slaves and to torture. They are horrible humans.
Created from a mountain and one of the masters is Dora. She is not one of the slaves, neither is she one of the masters. Her best friends Thistle gets killed almost every night and is alive the next one. Life sucks
And, well stuff happens, not much, the book is slow. But I wanted to see, cos it was weird, and never fully explained how it all came to be.
Weird, not something I recommend, but something I still could not put down,
Some people got together and managed to create an alternate dimension, no, they created a space in an already alternate dimension. A pocket they can't leave. A Garden where the same day happen again and again. And they turn cruel and kidnap children to use as slaves and to torture. They are horrible humans.
Created from a mountain and one of the masters is Dora. She is not one of the slaves, neither is she one of the masters. Her best friends Thistle gets killed almost every night and is alive the next one. Life sucks
And, well stuff happens, not much, the book is slow. But I wanted to see, cos it was weird, and never fully explained how it all came to be.
Weird, not something I recommend, but something I still could not put down,
December 30, 2021
Augusta Prime and Aunts, both from Tidbeck’s exquisite 2012 story collection Jagannath, were quite possibly my favorite short stories I read this year, so when I stumbled onto The Memory Theater in my local bookstore and realized that they had been expanded into a novel, there was no way I wasn’t going to read it immediately. Those two stories are each perfect, and this novel is not. But perfect is a high bar, and this is a fantastic book. Tidbeck isn’t the only contemporary fantasy writer trying to recapture the darkness in the European fairy tale tradition that the Victorians worked so hard to sand away, but she is the best I have read. There is a clarity and focus to her writing that suits her material very well; a matter-of-fact “and then the wolf gobbled her up” approach to violence that I suspect is much harder to pull off than it looks. And if, compared to her best short stories, there are moments when the spell lifts, and the gears of the story are visible, spinning away below, that very fault is also one of the novel’s pleasures.
September 22, 2021
I can see how this isn't going to be for everyone, but I loved it. This is slow, atmospheric, dark, and magical. This was a story that was really easy to get lost in and I really enjoyed reading this before going to sleep at night. It feels both like a fairytale and really original.
Sexual violence? No. Other content warnings? Torture, child abuse, murder, death, abandonment, gaslighting, cruelty.
Sexual violence? No. Other content warnings? Torture, child abuse, murder, death, abandonment, gaslighting, cruelty.
August 15, 2022
Really strong and focused opening, then a lot of interesting wandering.
July 14, 2022
The Memory Theatre has a dark fairytale quality to it, reminiscent of the brother's Grimm or, for a more modern reference, the Wayward Children series, and turned out to be much darker than I had initially expected. While Tidbeck did a fabulous job of creating an otherworldly eerie vibe, this novel was just a bit too short and simple to fully pay off all the cool and creepy loans it took out. I liked it well enough but was sadly left a bit wanting by the conclusion.
Trigger/Content Warnings: child abuse, murder, torture
You can find me on...
Youtube | Instagram | TikTok
You can join our book club over on Patreon... (this was our book club pick for June)
PBB Book Club
Trigger/Content Warnings: child abuse, murder, torture
You can find me on...
Youtube | Instagram | TikTok
You can join our book club over on Patreon... (this was our book club pick for June)
PBB Book Club
July 1, 2021
An odd, beautiful, and brilliantly twisted novella that reminded me of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi meets Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. It follows two children, Thistle and Dora, trapped in a strange bubble universe known only as the Gardens. The Gardens are populated by violently abusive fae-like creatures known only as The Masters and a host of lost children, fallen through cracks in the universe and kept captive as servants. It chronicles Thistle and Dora's escape, and the parallel exile of a Master named Augusta as she navigates the human world as a being who has abandoned her humanity.
The most compelling parts of this novel were the smaller details on the edge of the plot. The eponymous Memory Theater and its leader, Nestor, reminded me strongly of Stoppard's Player King with a slightly more cheerful group of players in tow. I loved their inter-dimensional traveling theater and especially enjoyed the little glimpses we got of different worlds, including one which resembled WWII era Sweden. Tidbeck weaves the multiverse together with cross-cultural mythologies: in addition to Swedish folklore I caught glimpses of ancient Egyptian symbolism and old English fae legend reminiscent of Tam Lin. The ideas in this story were marvelous but I wish they had been given more room to grow: I wanted more from the Keeper of the Registry (of, it is implied, the library of Alexandria?) and the mysterious Ghorbi. Still, the vagueness of the details is effective in other ways; The Memory Theater has a strange, dream-like quality to its prose that lends itself well to the "dark fairy tale" atmosphere and humanizes Thistle's trauma in comparison, making his experiences all the more bleak and frightening. I also loved the way Tidbeck plays with time, both literally as a plot point and more subtly in the way the novel seems to take place somewhere outside of it. I enjoyed how the novel ends on a hopeful note, and though I struggled to feel fully satisfied by the ending I still enjoyed the experience of it.
The most compelling parts of this novel were the smaller details on the edge of the plot. The eponymous Memory Theater and its leader, Nestor, reminded me strongly of Stoppard's Player King with a slightly more cheerful group of players in tow. I loved their inter-dimensional traveling theater and especially enjoyed the little glimpses we got of different worlds, including one which resembled WWII era Sweden. Tidbeck weaves the multiverse together with cross-cultural mythologies: in addition to Swedish folklore I caught glimpses of ancient Egyptian symbolism and old English fae legend reminiscent of Tam Lin. The ideas in this story were marvelous but I wish they had been given more room to grow: I wanted more from the Keeper of the Registry (of, it is implied, the library of Alexandria?) and the mysterious Ghorbi. Still, the vagueness of the details is effective in other ways; The Memory Theater has a strange, dream-like quality to its prose that lends itself well to the "dark fairy tale" atmosphere and humanizes Thistle's trauma in comparison, making his experiences all the more bleak and frightening. I also loved the way Tidbeck plays with time, both literally as a plot point and more subtly in the way the novel seems to take place somewhere outside of it. I enjoyed how the novel ends on a hopeful note, and though I struggled to feel fully satisfied by the ending I still enjoyed the experience of it.
March 9, 2021
The writing style and the plot of this one reminded me of a fairytale I've never read before. It has some otherworldly strangeness about it too...and it sure gives one a different perspective on what reality might be like plus it gives us a peek behind that curtain at the magical workings of the multiverse.
The story starts out with two young people named Dora and Thistle. After a bit of reading you quickly realize that things are far from perfect in the world they are in. All Thistle wants is to go home but some very powerful people, especially Augusta, stand in his way. And how do you get home when home is not a place you can simply walk to?
Basically I found this tale strange. It deals with a multiverse and it's somewhat complicated. And as I said above it sort of gives you a peek of what might be going on behind the scenes while we are totally unaware. The main character is clever once he puts his mind to solving his problem, that certainly is true. But at the same time the story was just a bit too odd for me to really truly enjoy to the fullest. I couldn't get that into the characters or their missions. And I certainly didn't feel anything for Augusta. I read the entire story but I didn't feel compelled to read it. It was like a novel length fairytale.
I admit I also feel a bit confused as to what the people in the garden actually are. I think I know what they are but then other clues in the story point to something else...so?? It just leaves me feeling somewhat muddled.
The story starts out with two young people named Dora and Thistle. After a bit of reading you quickly realize that things are far from perfect in the world they are in. All Thistle wants is to go home but some very powerful people, especially Augusta, stand in his way. And how do you get home when home is not a place you can simply walk to?
Basically I found this tale strange. It deals with a multiverse and it's somewhat complicated. And as I said above it sort of gives you a peek of what might be going on behind the scenes while we are totally unaware. The main character is clever once he puts his mind to solving his problem, that certainly is true. But at the same time the story was just a bit too odd for me to really truly enjoy to the fullest. I couldn't get that into the characters or their missions. And I certainly didn't feel anything for Augusta. I read the entire story but I didn't feel compelled to read it. It was like a novel length fairytale.
I admit I also feel a bit confused as to what the people in the garden actually are. I think I know what they are but then other clues in the story point to something else...so?? It just leaves me feeling somewhat muddled.
September 8, 2023
Jag trodde jag hade växt ifrån sagor, men den här mörka historien för vuxna är så mycket mer med sitt poetiska språk, naturmystik, multiversum, berättelser om grymhet, sökande efter ursprung och inte minst beskrivningen av teatern som på Shakespeares vis spelar en pjäs i pjäsen. Rekommenderas varmt.
February 25, 2021
A very interesting read. I liked The Memory Theater in that it reminded me of Christina Henry at times, or Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. This very dark story has children trapped in an alternate world, a pervasive sense of dread, and an exit that's hard to find.
Dora and Thistle live in the Gardens. Thistle is a slave who serves Augusta Prima. Augusta has been scratching Thistle's skin as long as he's been there, a little at a time. Once his entire skin is marked it will be time to kill him. Dora is technically part of the aristocracy, but when she arrived her father decided he didn't want to raise a child. Thistle was tasked with raising her and now they're like brother and sister.
Augusta's elaborate design is nearly complete and time is running out to find the door. The only person who knows where to find it is The Trader, who moves between the worlds making bargains - the bigger the request, the steeper the price. What will two children running for their lives be willing to trade?
As I said, it's dark and Augusta is downright bloodthirsty. It won't be everybody's cuppa. I liked it, but I would've liked it more if the ending had been more satisfying.
Dora and Thistle live in the Gardens. Thistle is a slave who serves Augusta Prima. Augusta has been scratching Thistle's skin as long as he's been there, a little at a time. Once his entire skin is marked it will be time to kill him. Dora is technically part of the aristocracy, but when she arrived her father decided he didn't want to raise a child. Thistle was tasked with raising her and now they're like brother and sister.
Augusta's elaborate design is nearly complete and time is running out to find the door. The only person who knows where to find it is The Trader, who moves between the worlds making bargains - the bigger the request, the steeper the price. What will two children running for their lives be willing to trade?
As I said, it's dark and Augusta is downright bloodthirsty. It won't be everybody's cuppa. I liked it, but I would've liked it more if the ending had been more satisfying.
November 25, 2022
3.5 stars. I love fairy tales written by authors who know how they work, and Karin Tidbeck does. They’ve made something totally unique, full of bizarre, beautiful, horrible things: a garden where adults dance and play games while forcing children to serve them, a girl made out of earth, a theater that saves worlds by performing what happened in them. The body count here is high, but no higher than in most fairy tales from the Grimm brothers or earlier. Tidbeck also grounds their story in a real place (their native Sweden) and a real time (around World War II). I enjoyed watching them fit historical events in with the weirder fantasy stuff.
Although the side characters in this book are delightful and the villain, Augusta, is delightfully awful, the two main characters, Dora and Thistle, are pretty stock fairy-tale protagonists. I couldn’t describe either of their personalities in more than two words if you paid me. They’re sympathetic, but not particularly memorable, which is why I didn’t rate this otherwise inventive story higher.
Note on the format: I listened to the audiobook, read by Tanya Cubric. I probably would have understood the story more easily had I read it in print, but Cubric’s narration was such a good fit for the story that I’m glad I continued with audio.
Although the side characters in this book are delightful and the villain, Augusta, is delightfully awful, the two main characters, Dora and Thistle, are pretty stock fairy-tale protagonists. I couldn’t describe either of their personalities in more than two words if you paid me. They’re sympathetic, but not particularly memorable, which is why I didn’t rate this otherwise inventive story higher.
Note on the format: I listened to the audiobook, read by Tanya Cubric. I probably would have understood the story more easily had I read it in print, but Cubric’s narration was such a good fit for the story that I’m glad I continued with audio.
Read
July 30, 20212021 reads, #51. DID NOT FINISH. I woke up the other day and realized that I now had over 70 contemporary fiction novels in my To Be Read list, some now on that list for over three years; and that the reason it had piled up so high was because I've just come to dread taking on these books so much, in that the vast majority of contemporary fiction I read anymore (easily 95 percent of it) seems to just be an endless recycling of stories I've already heard, featuring characters I can't work up any interest in. So I made an agreement with myself, that I would try to get this list back down to a reasonable length by the time Christmas rolls around, by committing to only the first 50 pages of each one; and that, even if it's well-written, if the story hasn't grabbed me enough by that page-50 mark to make me want to read more, I would abandon it altogether and not even bother writing a review, but instead copy and paste this paragraph you're currently reading. So, that's what's happened here with my abandonment of this book; not necessarily that it's badly done, but that I simply found it bland and derivative, interchangeable with one of a thousand other contemporary novels I've already read. Keep it in mind when deciding whether or not to check it out yourself.
December 8, 2020
I just love Karin Tidbeck's prose. No one ages in the gardens, and time does not exist. The masters there--very reminiscent of fae--hold endless revelries and have forgotten who they are. They force children who wander into the garden to be their servants, and they abuse them and eat them before the children reach adulthood. Thistle is one such servant, and Dora is his best friend/sister. Dora is the daughter of a mountain and one of the masters of the garden, but the master refuses to acknowledge her. When it comes time for Thistle's hunt, he and Dora manage to escape the garden, and it's up to a witch like character (actually, she reminded me more of Gandalf) and a theater troop to fine Thistle's name so that he can be truly freed from the garden's clutches. Meanwhile, one of the masters has discovered time, and she's been banished from the garden. She's the one that holds Thistle's true name, but she's unlikely to give it to him.
WWII is happening in the background.
The theater troop reminded me of Shakespeare's plays.
Anyway, this novel is inventive and intriguing and quite excellent. Can't wait to see more of Tidbeck's work translated.
WWII is happening in the background.
The theater troop reminded me of Shakespeare's plays.
Anyway, this novel is inventive and intriguing and quite excellent. Can't wait to see more of Tidbeck's work translated.
February 11, 2023
Verkligen en sagopärla, med oförutsägbar värld och vändningar. Anar ett under-verk (ett bakland av ett eget ja just det - multiversum) som jag inte fullt får grepp om men samtidigt får just lagom av, för att följa den här berättelsen. Bakar in vibbar från mina tidigare läsresor i fantasy, tex Ett veck i tiden, Piranesi, för att inte nämna Biblioteket i babel av Borges och, fast kanske mindre smickrande, Midnattsbiblioteket (bara som en referens som också har biblioteket som grundidé egentligen), men med nordiska teman, samisk och norrländsk kultur på ett hörn. En midsommarnattsdröm också, och Resan till Melonia, för teaterns skull, kanske muminberättelsen med en teaterpjäs också, bara för att.
Det enda jag upplevde var att det gick för fort ibland, jag hade velat få mer mustighet, mer förankring i miljö, mer av /värld/ - den är väldigt handlingsdriven.
Spännande detta med att den översatts från engelska, och att Sverige förbisett en författare av denna rang! Får definitivt lust att ta mig an hela författarskapet snarast möjligt, och ser fram emot författarbesöket på Pilgatan i Umeå tisdag 14/2 2023.
Det enda jag upplevde var att det gick för fort ibland, jag hade velat få mer mustighet, mer förankring i miljö, mer av /värld/ - den är väldigt handlingsdriven.
Spännande detta med att den översatts från engelska, och att Sverige förbisett en författare av denna rang! Får definitivt lust att ta mig an hela författarskapet snarast möjligt, och ser fram emot författarbesöket på Pilgatan i Umeå tisdag 14/2 2023.
February 28, 2021
There's certainly a lot to enjoy here: the wanton cruelty of the psychopathic faeries (reminding me more than a little of some self-styled "lords" and "ladies" in our reality), the concept of the Memory Theater (which doesn't come into play until almost 100 pages in), the play with time and memory and change. And the ending is quite satisfying.
It's a fairly straightforward fantasy novel; it's hard for me to get excited by work that's so respectful of genre conventions. I was hoping for more of the unstable shards of Jagannath, so I'm probably being unfair by assigning only 3 stars. Some of the themes of the earlier stories are expanded on (see "flogging servants", for example), but this feels a lot more like Amatka in approach, with different genre conventions.
It's a fairly straightforward fantasy novel; it's hard for me to get excited by work that's so respectful of genre conventions. I was hoping for more of the unstable shards of Jagannath, so I'm probably being unfair by assigning only 3 stars. Some of the themes of the earlier stories are expanded on (see "flogging servants", for example), but this feels a lot more like Amatka in approach, with different genre conventions.
Read
June 27, 2021i expected to love this, or at least to like it, and instead i dnf'ed in the first chapter bc i bounced so hard off the (excruciatingly twee) style. not even bothering with a rating bc this is clearly a taste thing but WHEW sometimes you and an author are just reverse-polarity magnets!
March 9, 2021
This was a really fun story, with elements I've found in other stories: the multiverse, magic, worlds within worlds, folklore, and fantasy, but these were combined in completely fresh ways. I'll definitely be on the lookout for work by this engaging and unusual author.
September 30, 2022
3.5 rounded down.
The book has its moments and it's not bad but the way it was told made it so I never really got invested into the characters and even when tragic things happened to them it was like "oh ok" and it probably didn't help that it largely seemed like it was also how Dora felt.
The book has its moments and it's not bad but the way it was told made it so I never really got invested into the characters and even when tragic things happened to them it was like "oh ok" and it probably didn't help that it largely seemed like it was also how Dora felt.
September 12, 2022
In The Memory Theater a girl and a boy, Dora and Thistle, escape from a palace during a perpetual, eternal summer evening party, where nobles murder and devour children as a regular part of the evening entertainment, somewhere between dessert and rounds of croquet on the lawn. Unfortunately for Dora and Thistle, one of the nobles, the monstrous and fabulously dressed Lady Augusta, follows them as they flee across worlds.
The line between fairy tales and the horror genre is incredibly porous. But few stories that I have read straddle that line as well as the lyric and dreamlike The Memory Theater. Read it because Lady Augusta is so engagingly self involved and petty that you kind of end up rooting for her, until you are reminded why that’s a horrible idea. Read it because the multiverse that Karin Tidbek creates makes a strange sort of sense that follows you around a long time after you’ve put the book down. Read it because you are a fan of Neil Gaimain’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and feel the need for some children discovering how to be adults by way of confronting monsters. Read it because growing up can be terrifying and monstrous, except for the friends that you manage to hold on to along the way. Read it because, as in so many of the best stories about the quest to return home, there is the bittersweet knowledge that home does not stay unchanged while you're gone, so you can never truly return to what you left, you can only try to build it anew.
Reviewed by Andrea Borchert, Librarian, Koreatown Media Lab
The line between fairy tales and the horror genre is incredibly porous. But few stories that I have read straddle that line as well as the lyric and dreamlike The Memory Theater. Read it because Lady Augusta is so engagingly self involved and petty that you kind of end up rooting for her, until you are reminded why that’s a horrible idea. Read it because the multiverse that Karin Tidbek creates makes a strange sort of sense that follows you around a long time after you’ve put the book down. Read it because you are a fan of Neil Gaimain’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and feel the need for some children discovering how to be adults by way of confronting monsters. Read it because growing up can be terrifying and monstrous, except for the friends that you manage to hold on to along the way. Read it because, as in so many of the best stories about the quest to return home, there is the bittersweet knowledge that home does not stay unchanged while you're gone, so you can never truly return to what you left, you can only try to build it anew.
Reviewed by Andrea Borchert, Librarian, Koreatown Media Lab
January 27, 2023
A dark and disturbing fairy tale that also has love and loyalty scattered throughout. The story surrounds children Dora and Thistle. They were brought to this terrible place where there are adults who never grow old, who live the same day over and over, and are cruel beyond measure. Even though the adults never age, the children do. Once they reach a certain point, they are hunted by these barbaric grown-ups and killed. Thistle is coming up to this time and his abuser, Augusta, is more than thrilled to get it started. Just before all of this happens, Augusta is banished. In order to be totally free, Thistle must get Augusta to give him his real name. Off he and Dora go in search of this evil woman. On the way, they see wonderful and terrible things. We also follow Augusta as she wreaks havoc every place she goes. I love going on there journey even though I was cringing at some of the horrific events that happened throughout. The ending was bittersweet but tied everything up nicely.
August 3, 2021
This is a fairy story - not a fairy tale, exactly, but a story with fairies. Or should I say "fair folk" or "lords and ladies": these are the type of fairies who need to be spoken about with euphemisms, since you don't want to draw their attention and you really don't want to irritate them.
So this is a dark tale. Dark, but not grim: there is friendship even in the cruel Gardens; there is hope for tomorrow.
There were scenes that felt a bit unconnected with the main story, but overall I enjoyed the book. It's not a long story, but I believe it will stick with me for a time.
If you enjoyed Piranesi, I recommend giving this book a try.
So this is a dark tale. Dark, but not grim: there is friendship even in the cruel Gardens; there is hope for tomorrow.
There were scenes that felt a bit unconnected with the main story, but overall I enjoyed the book. It's not a long story, but I believe it will stick with me for a time.
If you enjoyed Piranesi, I recommend giving this book a try.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 518 reviews