THE DEFINITIONS by Matt Greene

5 stars

This dystopian novella verges on the poetic, as a group of amnesiac patients/prisioners get rehabilitated in a remote, locked down facility called The Center. The residents are told by the staff that they are recovering from a neurological virus that has wiped out their personal memories and much of their language. When they recover enough, they are told they will graduate and be returned to the outside world for which they’re being prepared.

But an ominous feel pervades the center and has echoes of the haunting novel Never Let Me Go where residents were there for spare parts for the uber-wealthy. The residents in The Center take weird classes ranging from Grammar to Politeness, for which they have no context in which to evaluate the course content, and much of which seems brainwashing by a communist regime. They take medications said to counter the virus but that seem to amplify ambiguity, they also get multiple weekly body scans where dye is injected into their veins.

The anonymous narrator of unclear gender gradually regains inherent language skills, which prove poetic and brilliant in perceiving the world. Could he be an intellectual dissident being re-programmed? Could the fuzzy memories that the residents be real? Stripped of language what is reality and how can humans make any sense of it? The narrator has been writing down memories in hope of an emergent clarity about identity and the meaning of relationships that emerge between the patients.

Come for the brilliance of the language along with the metaphysical musings that never get resolved. And the sheer breath of the words remembered by the narrator that offer glimpses into a life before amnesia: glove, dodecahedron, actuary, stables, darkness, thunder, perpendicular. The narrator compares language to “the molds in trays that we use to bake muffins: without it everything flows into everything else.” And the poetic: he “then upturned his palms so I could see the creases running like channels of ocean carrying rivulets through a beach on their way back to shore.”

Greene gives us much to ponder as language redefines the narrator’s essence. Brilliant!

Thanks to Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.