Three Chinese-American girls meet in weekend language school in the nineties and, as the years pass, one becomes an artist, one a tech entrepreneur and one a community activist, but they continue to move in and out of each others lives, through the present and into the future.

I was really looking forward to this book. I enjoyed Lisa Ko's debut novel, The Leavers and anticipated that her vision of these women's lives in the future and the world they inhabit would be imaginative and thought-provoking. The first half of the book is excellent, although I was far more interested in Giselle's development as an artist than Jackie's involvement in a tech start-up, and Ellen's life taking over a derelict building and starting a community garden was given less space. Each woman finds their own path, two with substantial buy-in from billionaires. The first part of the novel is the strongest, depicting New York in the nineties, with each woman showing a different aspect of life in that time, from neighbors fighting gentrification to the long hours demanded of tech workers.

The final half of the novel, where Ko takes her characters into the future, is the weakest part of this book. The world she depicts here is that of a thousand other dystopian novels, a disappointment after the inventiveness of the first half of the book. That genre, with its future world basically the same across the board, is very popular and her version of it will no doubt be interesting to many readers, but I was bored. The first half, however, was very good. ( )

I read this book because I had read "The Leavers" by Ko and enjoyed it. This book was. ambitious and creative. It follows 3 girls of Chinese descent from their pre-teens in the 1980's into the 1990s and then leaps forward into a dystopian world in 2040. The book takes place in New York and Ko does a good job of getting into the heads of each of the characters. She tries to hit on so many topics such as. performance art, immigration, racism, technology, and social activism. The book is told in 3 sections through the eyes of each of the characters. All though the book talks about these 3 friends being bonded and it does. deal with their friendship, I found the connections actually very loose among the 3 of them. The book does bog down in a lot of detail that shows Ko's creativity but doesn't do much for the story. I enjoyed the final section in 2040 the most as it dealt with the negative trends we are seeing with climate change and the rich versus the poor. I would recommend reading "the Leavers" before this. one. Not sure if I would read another book by Ko unless I truly was interested in the topic. This book probably would appeal more to a younger female reader. ( )

Giselle, Jackie, and Ellen attend the same Chinese school as pre-teens during the 1980s and form a bond over their similar other-ness that lasts throughout their lives. Lisa Ko explores these characters and their relationships with each other at three different points in time from each character’s point of view in her new novel, Memory Piece. What starts out as a confused, angsty teen and 20-something book takes a sharp turn as the book moves first into the tech boom of the late 1990s and then to a bleak and dystopian 2040. With Memory Piece, Ko examines feminism, relationships, and art with a very minimalist style that I enjoyed. Her portrayal of the 80s and 90s was on point, while the futuristic section was bleak but very plausible. I liked this book, and I think readers of RF Kuang, Kiley Reid, and other young literary writers will enjoy it, too. ( )