Ann Brashares

Author of My Name Is Memory suggests:
I've been thinking a lot about memory lately, which drew me to Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov. I am enchanted by the lost world of his early childhood in St. Petersburg and Vyra and by the thrilling climb up the family tree, ornamented by glimpses of Dostoyevsky (Nabokov's great-great-uncle was his jailer and lent him novels in prison), the Tolstoys, Pushkin and Chekhov. I love the many places in which Nabokov summons the titaness Mnemosyne. She is Memory, daughter of Earth (Gaia), mother of Poetry (Erato), Music (Euterpe), History (Clio), Comedy (Thalia) and the rest of the nine Muses. That's about the loveliest conception of memory I can imagine.

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