MixedHarvard ReviewSome of these experiments are more successful than others. The book is at its best when the narrator situates her Russian-Jewish genealogy in a broader historical context ... Another highlight of the book is Stepanova’s art criticism, which ranges from the photography of Francesca Woodman to the gouache paintings of Charlotte Salomon. One standout chapter looks at the American sculptor Joseph Cornell ... Yet Stepanova missteps when venturing into the present-day topics of social media, digital photography, and Internet archives. In chapters that diagnose the nature of twenty-first century life, the narrative loses its thread, becomes meandering, and even veers into hyperbole ... Sections of the book that lack context, such as the chapter \'A Handful of Photographs,\' which merely describes a list of pictures, feel less innovative than underbaked. In Memory of Memory might have succeeded formally as a collection of essays. But a novel, even a genre-bending one, promises its readers a story—and on this promise, In Memory of Memory doesn’t quite deliver.
