Mary has started remembering things that she knows aren't real—but the events feel exactly like her actual memories. Who is she, if she can't be sure she knows her own past?
All the ingredients are present for a rich and compelling novel. But after its promising opening, Awake Awake often becomes mired in plodding teenage recollections and dialogue that lacks precision. Mozley has previously spoken about finding dialogue a struggle, and it remains her weak point ... Yet the novel gathers force in its final section, when the nature of the friends’ shared loss comes into focus ... A reminder that an uneven novel can still be a worthwhile one.
On the one hand, a clarion call – a clear-eyed view of contemporary moral and political failure in the UK – and on the other, an assembly of engrossing philosophical and metaphysical engagements with the nature of memory. Its barely resolved uncertainties make it a fascinating read, but in the end you aren’t sure it was meant to be quite so strange.
Ambitious ... Mozley has written an introspective and intelligent novel in a non-linear fashion. It considers the impact of friendships formed in childhood and of the events in history that we both witness and study.
