Redfern Jon Barrett's Forget Yourself was re-released by Lethe Press in January 2016.
Information about Redfern Jon Barrett:
Born in the north of England in the summer of 1984, Redfern Jon Barrett is a writer and polyamory rights campaigner. Armed with a doctorate in literature from Swansea University/Prifysgol Abertawe, they are author to novels The Giddy Death of the Gays & the Strange Demise of Straights (finalist for the 2016 Bisexual Book Awards) and Forget Yourself, as well as having contributed to publications including Guernica Daily, PinkNews, Van Winkle’s, and Strange Horizons on topics ranging from 18th century nonmonogamy to 23rd century science fiction. Redfern has worked with both Guernica and PEN America as a reader, and currently divides his time between Britain and Berlin, where he lives with his two partners.
Click here to visit his official website.
Information about Forget Yourself:
"It is important that you know: I love you.
Of course I have no idea who you are.
But I have no real idea who I am either, so it seems fair to me."
Blondee lives in a world without memories: just four walls, fifty huts and a hundred forgotten people. She came in with the food rations. Mind and body naked, like everyone. Now she lives in a triangular hut at the edge of everything. They say she was a thief - she has long fingers - and she certainly has a reputation for taking multiple lovers. But haunted by the ghost of a fat man and dreaming of a stone woman, Blondee knows she can reshape the world - she just needs to get the world to listen...
A REVIEW OF REDFERN JON BARRETT'S FORGET YOURSELF
Redfern Jon Barrett's debut science fiction novel Forget Yourself was originally published as an independent novel in 2012. It's great that Lethe Press has re-released it, because it's a thought-provoking and well-created novel. It's quite an extraordinary reading experience due to the author's multi-layered vision about love, hate, hope, change, society, renewal and finding a purpose for your life.
Because I recently read Redfern Jon Barrett's The Giddy Death of the Gays and the Strange Demise of Straights and found it excellent, I was eager to read Forget Yourself. When I began to read this novel, I immediately found myself fully captivated by the story and hoped that it wouldn't end, because its complexity hooked me from the start. I'm sure that it will have the same effect on many readers, because it's one of the most intriguing speculative fiction novels available for those who want to read something different and thought-provoking.
Forget Yourself is a not an easy science fiction novel, but it's a rewarding and satisfying reading experience. It's an immersive and emotionally challenging novel that has a lot to offer for many readers.
Here's a bit of information about the story:
Blondee doesn't have any personal memories. She knows things, but her memories are flat and meaningless. She lives with other people in a compound. People who arrive in the compound have committed crimes and they're named by the clues they came with. Blondee may have been a thief, because she has long fingers, and she has a reputation for having many lovers. She has trouble finding new friends because of her reputation. She dreams of a stone woman, and she knows that she can change things...
As you can see by this short synopsis, Forget Yourself is not your normal kind of a science fiction novel, but something complex, delicate and meaningful. It has a soul and a strongly beating heart at its core.
Redfern Jon Barrett gives Blondee a unique voice that is a combination of uncertainty, hope, strength and curiosity. Blondee is not a conventional person, but someone who is a bit different. She lives inside a walled compound with others like her, because she has supposedly committed a minor crime and has been sentenced to live there.
The other people - Frederick, Pilsner, Ketamine, Burberry, Tanned, Tie etc - are similar to Blondee, because they also don't have any memories of what life was like before they came to the compound. They've also committed crimes and think that being in the compound is a punishment for their crimes. Although they live in the compound, they don't actually live in the full sense of the word, but rather exist inside the compound and try to get by as well as they can.
These people have created their own society and they have their own ways of conducting daily tasks. They have had to redefine themselves and learn to live in a new environment, because they can only remember bits and pieces of their previous lives. They live in huts and gather supplies. They have a class system that separates them by the nature of their crimes, and they have their own rules.
The people write down their memories in a book, which binds them together and serves as kind of a rule book to all of them. The book contains such writings as "If one person cheats, the other breaks up with them", "When it ends you have break-up sex once", "Criminals are confined" and "Criminals don't get the pleasures most do" (these writings tell people how to act in relationships and how to behave in various situations).
The author has created a delicate and satisfyingly complex vision of the walled compound and its denizens. His depiction of life in the compound feels believable, because he fluently writes about how people live their lives there and how they interact with each other. Bit by bit he reveals more about what happens at the compound and how people react to changes.
By creating his own vision of a closed society, the author has an opportunity to examine humanity and social behaviour in a realistic way. His observations about human condition and feelings feel fascinatingly accurate and humane.
Redfern Jon Barrett writes about difficult themes and issues in a confident way and doesn't resort to preaching about anything. Such themes and issues as love, sexuality, monogamy, polyamory, intimacy and class warfare are handled remarkably well and naturally, which is astonishing, considering that this novel is the author's debut novel. I like the way the author writes about sex and sexuality, because he addresses many challenging issues in a deep way and gives readers something to think about.
One of the best things about this novel is that the author writes excellently about various relationships. For example, what happens between Blondee, Frederick and Burberry is handled extremely well. I think that reading about the relationships will have a great emotional impact on many readers. It certainly had that effect on me, because everything was described in a realistic way.
It's great that the author shows how people deal with change. As in reality, some people are capable of accepting changes while others question them and try to keep to the old ways. He also shows that it's important to accept yourself as you are and live your life the way you want to live it.
Redfern Jon Barrett's literary prose is simultaneously beautiful, bleak and descriptive. His writing style has faint echoes of Margaret Atwood's writing style. (It's possible that readers may disagree with me on this, but in my opinion, there's also something in his writing style that is slightly reminiscent of Allen Ashley and Terry Grimwood.)
Forget Yourself is a science fiction novel that be recommended to literary fiction readers and speculative fiction readers alike. It will please both readerships due to its contents and excellent prose. It reads a bit like a mystery novel, because the story unfolds towards the end and intriguing things are revealed to readers.
Please, do yourself a favour and invest a bit of time into reading this gem of a novel. It's a fascinating, touching, heart-breaking and thought-provoking story that is worth reading. I consider it to be a prime example of how engaging and thought-provoking science fiction can be at its best and how deeply an author can address challenging and difficult issues by means of speculative fiction.
Highly recommended!