A “moving, astounding, and totally unsettling” (Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author) literary debut following two patients in recovery after an experimental memory drug warps their lives.
Lucien moves to Los Angeles to be with his grandmother as she undergoes an experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s using the new drug, Memoroxin. An emerging photographer, he’s also running from the sudden death of his mother, a well-known artist whose legacy haunts him.
Sophie has just landed the lead in the upcoming performance of La Sylphide with the Los Angeles Ballet Company. She still waitresses at the Chateau Marmont during her off hours, witnessing the recreational use of Memoroxin—or Mem—among the Hollywood elite.
When Lucien and Sophie meet at The Center, founded by an ambitious yet conflicted doctor to treat patients who’ve abused Mem, they have no memory of how they got there—or why they feel so inexplicably drawn to each other. Is it attraction, or something they cannot remember from “before”?
“Contemplative and wonderfully evocative, finishing The Shimmering State is like waking from a dream, where you reenter the world with fresh eyes and wonder at the frailty of your own memories” (Jessica Chiarella, author of The Lost Girls).
Genre: Literary Fiction
Lucien moves to Los Angeles to be with his grandmother as she undergoes an experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s using the new drug, Memoroxin. An emerging photographer, he’s also running from the sudden death of his mother, a well-known artist whose legacy haunts him.
Sophie has just landed the lead in the upcoming performance of La Sylphide with the Los Angeles Ballet Company. She still waitresses at the Chateau Marmont during her off hours, witnessing the recreational use of Memoroxin—or Mem—among the Hollywood elite.
When Lucien and Sophie meet at The Center, founded by an ambitious yet conflicted doctor to treat patients who’ve abused Mem, they have no memory of how they got there—or why they feel so inexplicably drawn to each other. Is it attraction, or something they cannot remember from “before”?
“Contemplative and wonderfully evocative, finishing The Shimmering State is like waking from a dream, where you reenter the world with fresh eyes and wonder at the frailty of your own memories” (Jessica Chiarella, author of The Lost Girls).
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Cinematic, dreamlike, at times brutal yet poignant. The premise of this new memory drug is tantalizing, and the storylines that unfold from the abuse of it are compelling." - Frances Cha
"Contemplative and wonderfully evocative. Finishing The Shimmering State is like waking from a dream, where you re-enter the world with fresh eyes and wonder at the frailty of your own memories." - Jessica Chiarella
"The Shimmering State is a slick, LA-set gel-cap, easily digestible, where memories and trauma are wiped away, though their imprints remain. At a rejuvenation center, a photographer and a dancer let their old selves go—every last unwanted memory—while out in the world, strangers’ memories are available for consumption in pill form. A classic tale of artists trying to make it in LA flipped on its head." - Katie M Flynn
"The Shimmering State gives readers what its title promises: a shimmering, dreamlike experience of multiple lives that collide and repel through fate and coincidence. In this hypnotic novel, Westgate offers her characters, and her readers, a beautifully dystopian shot at redemption, and shows the lengths people will go to remember and to forget." - Lydia Kiesling
"Westgate’s novel does what the absolute best books do—it makes you experience the world so differently. Who are we? Are we our memories? And if so, how do we know what memories are true and what might be manipulated? Moving, astounding, and totally unsettling. But also, as fascinating as memory itself." - Caroline Leavitt
"Stirring, lush, and thought-provoking, The Shimmering State is an entrancing novel about the losses that bind us and the memories that define us." - Elan Mastai
"Who are we without our memories? Who might we be if we could relive someone else's? Meredith Westgate's captivating first novel wrestles with these existential questions without sacrificing her characters' distinctive and emotional essences. An impressive, unsettling, and surprisingly romantic debut." - Helen Schulman
"Like an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for the #MeToo era, The Shimmering State is a riveting, nuanced, and ultimately haunting meditation on the triangular relationship between sense, memory, and identity. There must be something in the California air because, like Joan Didion, Meredith Westgate has an extraordinary ear, not only for the stories we tell ourselves in order to live, but for the ways that we endlessly revise them to suit the new selves we continue to construct." - Adam Wilson
"Contemplative and wonderfully evocative. Finishing The Shimmering State is like waking from a dream, where you re-enter the world with fresh eyes and wonder at the frailty of your own memories." - Jessica Chiarella
"The Shimmering State is a slick, LA-set gel-cap, easily digestible, where memories and trauma are wiped away, though their imprints remain. At a rejuvenation center, a photographer and a dancer let their old selves go—every last unwanted memory—while out in the world, strangers’ memories are available for consumption in pill form. A classic tale of artists trying to make it in LA flipped on its head." - Katie M Flynn
"The Shimmering State gives readers what its title promises: a shimmering, dreamlike experience of multiple lives that collide and repel through fate and coincidence. In this hypnotic novel, Westgate offers her characters, and her readers, a beautifully dystopian shot at redemption, and shows the lengths people will go to remember and to forget." - Lydia Kiesling
"Westgate’s novel does what the absolute best books do—it makes you experience the world so differently. Who are we? Are we our memories? And if so, how do we know what memories are true and what might be manipulated? Moving, astounding, and totally unsettling. But also, as fascinating as memory itself." - Caroline Leavitt
"Stirring, lush, and thought-provoking, The Shimmering State is an entrancing novel about the losses that bind us and the memories that define us." - Elan Mastai
"Who are we without our memories? Who might we be if we could relive someone else's? Meredith Westgate's captivating first novel wrestles with these existential questions without sacrificing her characters' distinctive and emotional essences. An impressive, unsettling, and surprisingly romantic debut." - Helen Schulman
"Like an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for the #MeToo era, The Shimmering State is a riveting, nuanced, and ultimately haunting meditation on the triangular relationship between sense, memory, and identity. There must be something in the California air because, like Joan Didion, Meredith Westgate has an extraordinary ear, not only for the stories we tell ourselves in order to live, but for the ways that we endlessly revise them to suit the new selves we continue to construct." - Adam Wilson
Visitors also looked at these books
Used availability for Meredith Westgate's The Shimmering State