Murmuration is a 2019 novel by TJ Klune
The novel opens with a man on a road, with no memory of who he is or where he's going. All he knows is that he must follow the road to the little town where it leads, ignoring the pain in his head, and the memories of shattering glass and screaming metal, and the sequence of numbers tattooed on his wrist.
And then he enters the town and. . .
It's 1954, and Mike Fraizer is the owner of the only bookshop in the small, rural town of Amorea. He's friends with the crotchety owner of the local diner, Oscar, and he's sweet on one of the waiters, Sean— much to the amusement and interest of what feels like the entire town. Life in Amorea is perfect. The skies are always clear, the people are friendly and kind, there's no crime at all, and it looks like his relationship with Sean is finally ready to go to the next step. Everything is perfect.
So why is Mike having strange dreams about men with clipboards standing over his bed? Why is he having waking dreams about some other man in some other time, arguing with a woman and suffering tragedy after tragedy? Why is his wrist so itchy?
This novel provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Greg's father was physically abusive to both his wife and son. The only bright spot in Greg's memory of him is the awe his father displayed at a murmuration of starlings.
- Addiction Displacement: A variation where Sean's migraines are actually a result of his body fighting his heroin addiction, even after his years as a brain-dead coma patient.
- Addled Addict: Nathan Powell, AKA Sean Mellgard was a heroin addict who, after al ifetime of suffering, OD'd ad fell into a coma.
- Arc Words: "What do you know about schizophrenia?" Doc says this when Mike finally confesses all the strangeness he's been experiencing. Later, when he's woken from his coma, Dr. Hester and Dr. King tell him they made Doc bring it up in order to try and deflect Mike/Greg's questioning Amorea, but the result is that Greg winds up questioning if his waking isn't just an extended mental breakdown and he really does have schizophrenia. Hester and King realize that it was a terrible thing to do, as now they are struggling to convince Greg that they are real and Amorea is the dream.
- Awful Wedded Life:Greg and Jenny used to be good friends, but after a one night stand that resulted in a pregnancy, the two decided to do the "responsible" thing and get married. However, their daughter was born with Ectopia Cordis and died within two years. After that, Greg and Jenny could barely stand one another, growing first distant, then increasingly angry with one another until Greg decided to leave her the same time she decided to try and murder him. He wound up killing her in self defense, but she had already laid the groundwork down for her own self-defense claim, and so the jury didn't believe him when he swore he'd never hurt her or desired to hurt her.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: When Greg goes to Amorea at the end of the novel, Mike goes with him. The Mike personality was thought to have faded back into Greg's consciousness, and the two of them fight over who gets to live the idyllic life in Amorea, Greg who is the "real" personality and feels he deserves a good life after all the trauma of his own, and Mike, who was created out of all the best parts of Greg and would do anything to remain with the people he loves. In the end, Mike murders Greg and returns to Amorea, ready to start his life over again.
- Bittersweet Ending: Greg (and by extension, Mike) decide to return to return to Amorea, inducing a coma that he will never wake from. The Mike persona kills Greg once inside and takes his place as the bookshop owner, and begins his relationship with Sean all over again, with his memories of the outside world till intact this time. Dr. Hester notes that coma patients don't tend to live long, even in Cryo, and Mike knows that someday— probably soon— one of the two will die, and the other will forget them. The end of the physical book includes an
author's note saying, "They’ll be happy, I promise. One way or another. Because it’s not about the length of time you have, but what you do with it," implying that while the time they have will be good, it won't be long. - Caught in the Ripple: The majority of the townsfolk of Amorea don't notice anything weird about their town, don't question why they can't leave or don't have children, and don't remember when Oscar is erased from existence. When Mike tries to make Sean confront Amorea's strangeness, Sean has a violent seizure, and then wakes up with no memory of the past several hours.
- Enemy Without: Greg tries to go back to Amorea in order to take the life "Mike" left behind. But the Mike personality still exists, and once they go under the medically-induced coma, Mike kills Greg and returns to Amorea in his place.
- Eye Awaken: One of the signs Dr. Hester and Dr. King have that Greg may be waking is the fact that he keeps opening his eyes.
- False Utopia: Amorea is an experiment in storing human consciousness, and is loosely based off the childhood memories of the lead scientist working on the project. The citizens of Amorea have had their personality and memories altered while in cryogenic sleep, and while they are all perfectly pleasant people in Amorea, their real-world selves are mostly violent criminals who had no loved ones to care that their comatose bodies have been used for science.
- Generational Trauma: Greg's father was an abusive alcoholic, and Greg spends much of his adult life trying to keep his own anger issues in check so that he never becomes his father and never raises a hand to a woman.
- A Glitch in the Matrix: Numerous glitches begin to appear in Amorea once Mike begins documenting his potentially-schizophrenia-induced "events." These range from minor things like Mike realize he never actually orders inventory for his bookshop, or that there are no children in town, to larger ones like how nobody in town can travel to the mountains that surround them. If people in Amorea think too long on any of the strange happenings of their town, their reactions vary from severe migraines to being fully reset and having their memories of the conversation totally erased.
- In Spite of a Nail: When someone in Amorea dies, their place is rewritten so that someone else fills the gap they leave behind. Walter winds up taking over Oscar's diner, and as far as anyone in Amorea can tell, Walter has always owned the diner.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Oscar is the crotchety owner of local diner. While he gives everyone guff and exchanges insults with anyone who'd spar with him, he genuinely cares about Mike, Sean, and the town, and has an extensive collection of photographs of all the citizens of Amorea hanging on the Diner's walls.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The entire town of Amorea is an experiment in storing human consciousness during cryogenic sleep. While the long-term goal is preparation for long-term space travel, the other experiments include seeing if scientists can successfully eliminate the worst parts of a person's personality and memory in order to rehabilitate them. Many of the seemingly perfect citizens of Amorea are actually criminals ranging from rapists and murderers to unfortunate drug addicts.
- Madness Mantra:
- "What do you know about schizophrenia?" becomes a phrase Mike says every time he begins to question his grip on reality, to the point he can't quite believe that Amorea wasn't real, and that him waking from a coma isn't just a prolonged hallucination.
- "Nadine the African Queen." This is first said by Oscar as he suddenly remembers a woman he loved who used to live in Amorea, but nobody else remembers. He begins to shout to Mike about her right before he vanishes and is erased from the memory of the town. From then on, Mike forgets who Oscar is, but he remembers his voice saying "Nadine the African Queen," and it becomes a phrase Mike mutters when he has flashes of memories about events that have been Ret-Gone in Amorea.
- Ret-Gone: When someone dies in Amorea, the scientists managing the project erase all memories of their existence and reshuffle the remaining citizens so the absence isn't felt. When Oscar dies, Mike only half-remembers bits and pieces of his voice and is driven nearly insane trying to find out why. Before his death, Oscar suddenly remembered a woman he loved named Nadine, who had also been erased from Amorea, presumably after her own death.
- Revealing Continuity Lapse: Mike experiences more and more of these as the novel progresses. While some are minor (such as his realization that he never orders inventory for his bookshop, despite his signatures on the deliveries he receives), some are more major.
- At one point, two of the town locals get into a brawl at the diner and knock down three photos from the wall. Two of the photos feature the usual townsfolk, but one is folded partially and has a woman hidden on the side that nobody recognizes, who looks like she's in love with the photographer. Though Mike's memory has been erased, the readers know it's Nadine, the woman who Oscar had been in love with who was erased from the memory of the town. After, Mike is no longer sure that three pictures broke, only two. He wrestles with trying to remember the third for a while, and then later, as his memory deteriorates and he believes he has schizophrenia, Mike tries to find the photo again to prove that something is wrong in Amorea. By then the programming of Amorea has allowed the third photo to exist, but the photograph has been altered, and there is no woman.
- In the beginning of the novel, Oscar owns the diner, and has owned it for many years. When he dies and is erased from the continuity of the town, the much younger Walter ends up replacing him. Though Mike can't really remember Oscar more than the occasional auditory hallucination, he sees Walter cooking and becomes suddenly convinced that he's too young to run a diner, how did he do it? There had to be someone there to teach him. When he looks at the photos on the wall, he knows he's never seen Walter using the camera, even though his memories are trying to convince him that Walter is the one who took the pictures.
- Ripple Effect Indicator: The photos on the wall of the diner don't automatically change with the rest of Amorea's memory. It's only after Mike notices a photo that still contains a woman who no longer exists that the scientists behind the Amorea project remember to change it.
- Spotting the Thread: Though Mike was already noticing the strangeness of Amorea, after going to see Doc and getting a probable diagnosis of schizophrenia, he is encouraged to begin documenting possible schizophrenia-induced "events." This leads to him noticing enough inconsistencies with the town and having increasingly powerful hallucinations that he wakes up from cryogenic stasis.
- Til Murder Do Us Part: How Jenny decided to end her relationship with Greg. Unfortunately for her, Greg fought back, knocking her through a balcony railing and killing her.
- Turn Out Like His Father: One of Greg's fears is that he will turn out to be an abusive monster like his father. He very carefully keeps his negative emotions in check and fights his anger issues so that he never takes it out on his wife, even though the two of them can barely stand each other. Jenny specifically repeats that Greg has turned out like his father to distract him while she tries to stab him again, after he punched her the first time she tried to kill him.
- Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Thought by a hysterical Greg after his wife comes at him with a knife and he punches her, and then kicks her off the balcony when she attacks him again.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Shortly before she tried to murder him, Greg's wife filmed an emotional video of her saying how she was abused by him regularly and feared for her life. Greg realized she had planned the attack and intended to use the video as evidence in court for self defense. Now that she's dead, nobody believes that Greg was defending himself when he kicked her through the balcony railing.
