| Title | : | The Cleaners (Faraway Collection) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 28 |
| Publication | : | First published December 15, 2020 |
Gui is a professional cleaner at A Fresh Start, scrubbing away the unpleasant layers of memory that build up on the personal objects of his customers. Memory-blind himself, he can’t feel those wounds. Clara can, and she prefers them irretrievable. Until her sister, Beatrice, ultrasensitive to memory, raises one that could change Clara’s mind. For Gui, the past is gone. For Clara and Beatrice, deciding what to remember reaches to the heart of their shared history.
The Cleaners (Faraway Collection) Reviews
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The Cleaners (Faraway Collection) by Ken Liu (Goodreads Author), Kate Rudd (Narrator)
It's a world where our memories cover every single thing and have the ability to be remembered by anyone who touches the object we were touching when the memory was made. Just imagine such a world where you "share" that part of yourself that should be your own but instead can be picked up by others. Clara is the most normal of the three characters and she works at a big factory, cleaning memories off of used cell phones before they go to new owners. Beatrice, Clara's sister, ultrasensitive to memory, seems cold and hard because she needs to distance herself from others due to learning too much from each person she meets. Gui, owner of a one man cleaning shop, is memory blind so he experiences none of the memories from the objects he cleans.
I barely got into the story before it was over. Maybe it was too much for me, in such a short audiobook. By the time I wanted to know more about these people, the story was over. I am going to try another of this author's stories.
A Kindle Unlimited audio selection that is part of Faraway, a collection of retold fairy tales that take the happily-ever-after in daring new directions. -
I've got this as an ebook, but it also had the option to get the audiobook as well, with no charge, therefore I chose to try again. And this was my first audiobook which I've managed to listen to head to toe. Maybe because I listened to it while walking my dog, that's the only approach that worked for me so far. But I can't say it was a blast; I still prefer reading, it seems closer to me than hearing someone telling someone else's story.
Anyway, this Faraway series is based on retelling various fairytales, and Ken Liu's inspiration was The Princess and the Pea.
One interpretation of Andersen's tale is that the princess' sensitivity may be a metaphor for her depth of feeling and compassion, and this is exactly what Liu' story is focused on.
The idea that inanimate objects carry the emotional baggage of previous owners is not new, but Liu's approach is. If one wants their memories erased, they turn to a professional, who is memory blind and can't feel a thing. And this is Clara's case, who wants to get rid of her ex's memories. However, after a meeting with her sister, she kind of reconsiders.
It's a touching story, and any of us could find itself in Clara' shoes at one point in our lives. And Ken Liu's writing is as beautiful as ever. It's worth a try. -
Wow! But it’s, Ken Liu!
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾 -
The Cleaners is a fantasy or alternate reality short story by Ken Liu published as part of the Amazon Faraway Fairy Tales for the Here and Now Series (available on Kindle Unlimited). I don’t know if I can so justice when describing this story. It is an interesting read, more like faraway from here and now, and less of a fairytale. I read this because it was written by Ken Liu. I have now read a number of his stories and have grown to love the creative ideas and the way he develops those ideas in his writing.
In this story, emotions and memories exist physically on all inanimate objects that are touched or in close proximity with the person/s whose behavior, emotions, and interactions cause feelings. These feelings are later remembered by anyone who touches or picks up the object. The feelings attach themselves or are absorbed into the objects touched. The more people who touch or interact near an object the more layers of memories are formed. Nothing is lost. The memories cover the surfaces, penetrate crevices, slither into unreachable corners and resurface to permeate the innocent handler with a rush of emotions and memories, fears and anger. Where every emotion and memory can be sensed, there is no privacy. Since it is difficult to wipe the memories clean, many employ the services of professionals when the job is just too overwhelming or complicated to clean independently.
The story is told through the eyes of three characters - a Cleaner and two sisters. The Cleaner is memory blind and unable to sense memories by touch, an affliction that makes him highly sought after professionally for his ability to clean discretely with no threat of later extortion. One sister comes to our cleaner and hires him for a job to rid her house of all the memories, once fond and now painful, of the man who has left her. The other sister is an attorney, or works for an attorney, specializing in reproducing the memories for discrediting witnesses and for proving or disproving arguments. She is on the highest sensitivity spectrum and can invoke memories of even those objects that have been thoroughly scoured.
Most of the population is blessed and cursed with this sense, to some degree or another, so that alongside the happy memories of some, are the disparate sad, angry, or frustrated memories of others.
This is a worthy read, the writing and development of this sixth, seventh, (or whatever) sense is excellent. I read this while reading the soon to be released Lisa Genova NF book, Remember, and I was immediately caught up in a comparison with what Genova describes as the memory ability of some people with highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), people who retain complete and fully detailed memories of every day of their lives from their birth. Other than the fact that this is extremely rare, the HSAM person differs from our characters, in that he/she had to be there to remember the event, whereas the people in The Cleaners could sense a lifetime in feelings and memories of other people, merely by touching an object that had been handled or been in the proximity of another. Both are interesting concepts – one real and the other imagined. -
What an interesting story. We get a man that has the ability to "clean" away memories from objects so that when people touch them, they are not "burned" by those memories. I liked the idea of it and I also liked the realization that a lot of people do not recall things and sometimes it is better to remember the pain instead of pretending it didn't happen.
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This was probably the best book in this particular series so far, but the only issue I had was, at times, I hadn't a clue as to what was going on, so I had to flip back to previous pages to find out.
I thought the writing style was accessible, and easy to follow, and the general idea behind a male that can clean away memories was intriguing. This story didn't blow my mind or anything, but was a large improvement on the other stories in the Faraway collection. -
This confirms that I really need to read from Ken Liu! The Cleaners is a speculative short story LOOSELY inspired by The Princess and the Pea. Set in a world where touching objects leaves a residue of memories, this explores the concept of remembering, painful memories, healing, forgetting, and what it would mean to be unable to remember. Woven into the narrative is also a critique of modern industrial capitalism where we try to remove humanity and personhood from the creation of factory-made objects. For only 28 pages there is a surprising amount of thoughtfulness and depth. I definitely need to read more from Liu.
Note for people wondering how this relates to Princess and the Pea- the way they knew she was a princess was that she was so sensitive to be able to feel a pea under a stack of mattresses. Much like one of the sisters is incredibly sensitive to the layers and intentions attached to memories on objects. I actually really like how he spun that concept in such a different way. -
I enjoyed this 4th tale in the Faraway Series of fairy tales. It was about how memories coat every object like dust and when you touch them you can read every bit of their past. Their memories can be cleansed if someone hires a special 'cleaner' to take away their past so they are memory free like new again. It was too short and would have been fun to read as a longer tale. However, it was a relatable, fun read.
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To be very honest, I was confused the ENTIRE time. Maybe because it’s early in the morning & I’m still groggy from sleep but I had no idea what this story was about. However, I can connect it to what’s being said in other reviews. I agree it was interesting & definitely a different take on things to teach you a valuable message about the good & bad moments in life. I still recommend reading this, maybe after you’ve had your morning coffee!
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The concept of this story is very interesting and I want to read a full novel in the same world.
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It was a fresh take but I couldn't make any sense out of it. A Quick read, so *shrugs*.
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This was a really cool concept and i enjoyed reading this short story.
I'm interested to see if i'll enjoy the other stories in this series -
Good one!
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Fantastic!!!
RTC -
Faraway Series
The Prince and the Troll - Faraway, Book 1 - Rainbow Rowell - 3 Stars - Adam, Unnamed Troll? - An unlikely friendship between a man and a creature who helped him save his phone from under a bridge. It's a strange modern fairy tale world and I’m not sure I understood all that was going on but I enjoyed it.
Hazel and Gray - Faraway, Book 2 - Nic Stone - 3.5 Stars - Hazel, Gray - The most messed up version of Hansel and Gretel I’ve ever read…. Well, the original was pretty jacked too. There were some crazy twists in this story but I liked that. The end felt kind of unfinished.
The Princess Game - Faraway, Book 3 - Soman Chainani- 3.5 Stars - too many to list - Girls in Chaminade High School are being murdered and the “Princes'' a.k.a. popular boys are suspects. Two local police officers go undercover to try and catch the perps but blow their cover and it all goes sideways. I think I was most interested in this story. Probably because it has been the most straightforward and I knew exactly who the killer was. That did not diminish my pleasure in listening to the book. I’m glad they went for a full cast of narrators as there were a lot of characters. Even with the multiple cast I still didn’t know who was talking sometimes.
The Cleaners - Faraway, Book 4 - Ken Liu - 3 Stars - Clara, Beatrice, Gui - I have no idea what fairy tale this was supposed to be but that’s not the first with this series. The sister’s story was kinda interesting and so was Gui’s however I’m not sure how they connect and I left the story just feeling confused.
The Wickeds - Faraway, Book 5 - Gail Forman - 3.5 Stars - Elsinora, Gwendolyn, and Marguerite - The real story of Cinderella, Snow White and Repunzel’s mothers. This was a story I could get behind. I was still left with a sense of being confused but I loved the takes on what “really” happened as opposed to the highly exaggerated stories we know. -
Strange and magical!!
This was an adaption of The Princess and The Pea, though quite different. So-much-so, that I couldn't find similarities when reading and absolutely forgot that I was reading a retelling.
This is a cute short story of memories and forgetting painful ones. In forgetting those painful memories, we can lose sight of the teachings from that pain. Every memory is a lesson, be it good or bad.
It was a little weird, but I liked it. -
The fourth book in the Faraway Collection of Amazon Originals, Ken Liu, new author to this reader has a nice short and interesting story. Cleaning memories...who would have thought. Very surprising listen and narration was done very well. Narration by Kate Rudd was done well.
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Very short, but thought-provoking and philosophical story about the power of emotion and memory. I like this side of Ken Liu a lot.
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This was a unique, short read. It's based in an alternate reality, although maybe it's not so different from our own, in which memories are a tangible substance that is left behind and can be cleaned away. I was bored and a bit confused by the stuff between the sisters, but the cleaner was rather intriguing. A decent read that'll help you kill twenty minutes.
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For some reason, this one didn't really grab me. The idea is great but there was something about the strucutre.
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That was beautiful and not at all what I was expecting! This story is set in some side unoverse where people leave emotional impressions on objects and consequently have them cleaned to save themselves emotional heartache. That may not sound beautiful or touching, but it really is.The problem is that we learn from our mistakes and pain. Erase them and we learn nothing.
“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver
“Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.”
― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby
“We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams.”
― H.G. Wells -
The Prince and the Troll 5 ⭐
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Hazel and Gray 3.5 ⭐
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Wickeds 4 ⭐
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Princess Game 4.5 ⭐
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... -
Thought provoking story. In fact, I might have to reread it soon. I feel like it is the kind of story that keeps giving.
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4.5
There's a very interesting use of what I can only call 'concrete metaphor' here: the story is about memory and uses a very concrete metaphor for it, all set in a world similar ours but with that 'concrete metaphor' as part of its everyday reality. I felt there was something a bit hokey about the concrete/literal metaphor, but this is beautifully put together. -
Narrator: 4 stars 🌟
Story: 4 stars 🌟
Would definitely read more of this world, very fascinating:) Makes me wonder what I would see if I could touch stuff from my grandparents. -
These are the type of dark twisted fairy tales that certain types of dark twisted people would enjoy as bedtimes stories. That would be me. These are wonderful stories to fall asleep to. This one in particular was incredibly fascinating - the idea of cleaning unwanted memories attached to things. This alternative reality presents such a unique concept. I enjoyed Ken Liu's modern take on this fairy tale. I love them all and absolutely recommend them. Much better than I had expected.
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This was book four in the Faraway series. This one was also an interesting reading. It’s about how in everything that we touch in life it leaves a memory. And some people don’t like those memories and want to erase them and others want to keep them. I’m trying to think of the fairytale that this book goes to but I can’t think of it.
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*3.5
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“we all need to be reminded, from time to time, that we’re better than we remember.”
i’m starting to suspect that short stories might not be my cup of tea.
rating: 2/5 stars -
Unique 😱😱
I’m quite enjoying this KU with FREE Audible narration series.
Why?
They are short.
They are different.
They pique my interest.
They make me think.
This one:
Alternate reality.
Urban fantasy.
Memories are physical detritus that one can feel by touch—what a cool concept!! ❤️❤️
Cleaners clean unwanted memories.
The end?
Well, it just ended 🤷🏻♀️
My rec? I like this one better than the 1st.
