Australian book reviewsAustralian booksReviewThe story of Tommy, a boy who is forgotten on the same day each year by everyone who knows him
How to Be Remembered is an ambitious first novel from the journalist and podcaster Michael Thompson. Its big-hearted conceit is constructed around Tommy, a boy whose entire existence is wiped from the memory of everyone who knows him each year on the fifth of January. Tommy – who is placed into a foster home on the morning of his first birthday when his parents wake to discover a child they don’t remember having crying in their lounge room – is raised (in a way) by Miss Michelle, who runs Milkwood House, colloquially known as the Dairy. Every year Tommy wakes in the Dairy, to an empty room, and descends the stairs rehearsing the script that will ingratiate him back into the lives of his former friends and carer. Surprisingly, that works.
Thompson seems to view these systems with a more hopeful eye than most – although Tommy’s childhood crush, Carey, is bullied severely enough at school that she attempts to take her own life, the home itself is relatively safe and loving. Miss Michelle is a soft, maternal figure in the vein of Matilda’s Miss Honey, making time to care for the emotional needs of her charges, and supplementing Tommy’s possessions each year using money from her own pocket. The children are largely friendly and respectful of one another as well, with the notable exception of the “weird” Richie, whose resentment towards Tommy remains even after he forgets him. This all makes for a reasonably peaceful adolescence for Tommy, despite the emotional burden of “the Reset”.
Is it too optimistic? It’s hard to criticise a storyteller for wanting to find meaning and hope after the last few years.How to Be Remembered wears its heart proudly, earnest in the way of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or, dare I say, Forrest Gump. With the exception of one slightly melancholy year, Tommy maintains a child-like belief in happy endings, and although there are some setbacks on his journey, he’s not entirely unjustified. And while the book glosses over the treatment and opportunities for children in out-of-home care, such hopefulness is a comfort to return to. This isn’t to say that Tommy doesn’t face any obstacles, but he overcomes them with an ease and emotional resilience that feels slightly at odds with his condition.
The most complex part of the narrative are the mechanics of the Reset, but Thompson approaches this with a lightness of touch that works. He navigates it with a simplicity that verges on brutal – each year on the night of the Reset, as soon as Tommy closes his eyes to sleep, everything that he isn’t physically touching is erased, and all memory of him along with it. He’s unable to build a life in any of the standard ways: no identity, no hospital records, no bank account. This simplicity leaves the story free of overwrought explanations (and provides some comical moments), although the signposting is sometimes laboured.
The question that Tommy is mostly concerned with is, can he ever find love? Since his childhood at Milkwood House, Tommy has gravitated towards two people – Josh, the friend he makes in hospital, and Carey, the girl whose life he saves at Milkwood, and whom he loves from that moment forward. How to Be Remembered is a romance at heart, and Tommy’s capacity to see the best in people, while occasionally misplaced, is endearing. He is a wholesome, forgiving character who, when he finally meets his birth father as an adult, thinks only that he envies him “the sanctuary he’d made in which the outside world seemed a little less important, and a little further away.” While Tommy recognises that this life is closed to him, he too wants desperately for a cocoon to find respite in. Still, his lack of ego makes him uniquely positioned to face the challenges of the Reset – somehow, he always finds the capacity to start over.
How to Be Remembered depicts a version of reality in which people aren’t remembered through their hurts, or even their triumphs, but by the small everyday differences they make in the lives of those around them. While Tommy may never be able to take credit for the things he’s done, the difference he’s made in the lives of those around him will never be forgotten.
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