The Shimmering State, Meredith Westgate
The Shimmering State, Meredith Westgate
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The Shimmering State

Author: Meredith Westgate

Narrator: Ali Andre Ali, Emily Tremaine, Cassandra Campbell, Shaun Taylor-Corbett

Unabridged: 11 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/10/2021


Synopsis

Named a Book You Need to Read in 2021 by Harper’s Bazaar

A “moving, astounding, and totally unsettling” (Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author) literary debut following two patients in recovery after an experimental memory drug warps their lives.

Lucien moves to Los Angeles to be with his grandmother as she undergoes an experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s using the new drug, Memoroxin. An emerging photographer, he’s also running from the sudden death of his mother, a well-known artist whose legacy haunts him.

Sophie has just landed the lead in the upcoming performance of La Sylphide with the Los Angeles Ballet Company. She still waitresses at the Chateau Marmont during her off hours, witnessing the recreational use of Memoroxin—or Mem—among the Hollywood elite.

When Lucien and Sophie meet at The Center, founded by an ambitious yet conflicted doctor to treat patients who’ve abused Mem, they have no memory of how they got there—or why they feel so inexplicably drawn to each other. Is it attraction, or something they cannot remember from “before”?

“Contemplative and wonderfully evocative, finishing The Shimmering State is like waking from a dream, where you reenter the world with fresh eyes and wonder at the frailty of your own memories” (Jessica Chiarella, author of The Lost Girls).

About Meredith Westgate

Meredith Westgate grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. The Shimmering State is her first novel. Visit her at MeredithWestgate.com and on Instagram @MeredithWestgate.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Will

Doesn’t the body remember, even after the mind has been wiped clean?The Shimmering State opens with a quote from Proust about the only true voyage being to see with other people’s eyes. What if you could? Meredith Westgate gives this notion a go, using a sci-fi perspective to imagine a real worl......more

How about this gorgeous cover? The shimmery rainbowness of it makes my inner 80s child so happy. There’s a gorgeous story inside, too. The Shimmering State is a genre mash-up- dystopian, a touch sci fi, a dash of fantasy maybe. It’s probably easiest to call it speculative? But even with that, it feel......more

I must've read this book thirty times!......more

Goodreads review by Bandit

Seems I’m the first person to actually write a review about this book and it’s actually kind of a tough one to review. The immediate appeal was there, experimental memory thing straight out of a Black Mirror episode, the sunny California straight out of my dreams. But then, the actual reading of th......more


Quotes

"Westgate's debut novel explores memory as two characters recover from their misuse of Memoroxin, a new memory drug. The cast creates a shimmering world that explores the ethics of memory manipulation through the experiences of believable characters."