After an unspecified catastrophe, the future has gone analogue.

Somewhere in an old town sits the Memory Library, a private service whose patrons are invited to revisit experiences that have been stored, borrowed and rendered accessible again. Its rules are obscure, its librarian Charlie difficult to read, and its promise seductive. We see how memory might become something more tangible than recollection, something one could enter again.

Pont uses this speculative premise to worry about the instability of remembering itself. What happens when an experience survives but the person who first lived it has changed? When does memory become nostalgia, compulsion, self-fashioning or escape? The novella moves between philosophical fiction and science fiction, with Richard Holt’s black-and-white illustrations making the library feel eerie and dream-like. A strange, wonderful little book about repetition, attachment and loss.

Spineless Wonders / Espresso, Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2024. First edition. Paperback. Illustrated by Richard Holt. Very light shelf wear only; internally clean and unmarked, binding firm. Near fine condition.