re:mote voices

Title: Tokyo Doesn't Love Us Anymore
Author: Ray Loriga
Publisher:Canongate

Previously when I wrote about the book Electric by Chad Taylor, I dismissed it somewhat as just being a drug novel, rather than what I had perhaps expected it to be. One of the problems with it being “just a drug novel”, was that I had just read Tokyo doesn’t love us anymore.

Tokyo doesn’t love us anymore is something I’ve been trying to write about for a while now. One of those things you start to write before drifting off into uncertainty of how you are going to approach it, or whether what is being written is really getting the idea across. Which is perhaps ironic given the way that the central character himself experiences repeated efforts to go through events, and an increasing inability to keep track of what is going on.

Tokyo Doesn’t Love Us Anymore is the latest novel by Spanish writer Ray Loriga, published by the Edinburgh publisher Cannongate. The narrator is a nameless man who seems to be writing to address a woman he knows from the past. The narrator is salesman for The Company, who sells a Chemical. Like the narrator the company and chemical never gain a name. The company specialises in a chemical which erases memories. Unfortunately like so many drug dealers, the narrator has started to use the merchandise. With the result that this can be considered to be something of a drug novel, charting the stages of the salesman’s decline through the stages of abuse.

Told in sections we follow the narrator as he works the American/Mexican border, introducing us to him and the business of the chemical. With each section the character gets deeper into trouble with the company, due to his use of their product. Seeing him moving to Bangkok and hitting bottom, discarded by the company, and starting to lose track of reality. The result of his chemical abuse and this period is that he loses all track of memory and is institutionalised.

Tokyo Doesn’t Love Us Anymore is pretty effectively written, Loriga capturing the increasing loss of reality, which leads to basic repetition just to get through the day. In some ways he is no doubt presenting some commentary about the ultimate abuse of drugs and the negative effects that can result. On the other hand, while the year is put at 2003, and the narrative is contemporary there are undertones of science fiction. Several of the threads present seeming to dip into the territory of Vonnegut, or more so, Philip K. Dick. Chemicals were often featured in the work of Dick – for example the novel I read most recently “Now Wait For Last Year” featured a chemical which affected time perception, coupled with the most recent film based on his work Paycheck, which had the erasure of memory at it’s core. As well as these kind of themes, there is something about the style which echoes that kind of fiction.