Novels disappear, books are burned, and the protagonist gets a job as a typist but agrees to R’s request that she continue working on her manuscript in secret. Her manuscript, the story-within-a-story, continues: The typist, who has lost her voice, is being kept captive in a clocktower with a broken typewriter by her sadistic teacher. R and the narrator begin an extramarital affair (R’s wife and newborn are unable to see him in hiding). After he is returned, calendars disappear, and it continuously snows for the rest of the novel. The police take the old man and question him about ferries. She is writing about a typist and her typing teacher’s love affair. With him moved in, they fall into a rhythm, and she continues to work on a manuscript, portions of which are included in the novel. Her parents are dead, and she is friends with her childhood nurse’s widower, a former ferry worker who is known as the “old man.” An old family friend, Professor Inui, visits the protagonist with his wife, daughter, and son, and at their request, she takes some of her mother’s sculptures while they flee to a safehouse.Īfter learning that R remembers everything like her mother, the protagonist and the old man build him a secret room-her father’s storage room, which the police overlooked in their search.

In the present narrative, the protagonist is a novelist who is working with an editor called R. The protagonist’s father was an ornithologist when birds disappeared, he lost his job, and the Memory Police searched their house for bird-related material. Her mother remembers everything, unlike most people on the island, who forget the objects shortly after they disappear. At the start of The Memory Police, the unnamed protagonist recalls a childhood memory of her mother telling her about the disappearances of objects on their island.

Yoko ogawa the memory police