Pagan Kennedy, a '90s 'zine queen turned novelist, ventures into a surreal genre of time travel, addiction, and midlife crises in her new novel. Seeded in the social and pharmacological influences of Thomas De Quincey's poppies, Confessions of a Memory Eater succeeds in being both a quick, suspenseful read and a more thoughtful probe into what exactly we fear we lose with age.

Win Duncan, a 40-year-old history professor in New Hampshire, has lost the spark of his youth, the love of his wife, and the chance at earning tenure at Mercy College. Defeated and settling in for old age, Win gets a call from an old friend and troublemaker, Phil Litminov, who offers Win the chance to go back.

Litminov's mode of time travel is a little, brown pill, lovingly dubbed "Mem," which Win uses to revel in the glory of his younger selves. Win steers himself through his first blowjob, the long-forgotten pride of being admired by his wife, and his old Columbia haunts — the moments when he believed that the world was his for the taking. While the trips are euphoric, they leave him nearly paralyzed with grief and regret, and almost unable to survive in the present day.

Like De Quincey, Win sets out to write a book that simulates the experience of taking his drug of choice, effectively drawing the reader into a nostalgic trance of real and re-crafted memories. If Mem grants Win the chance to viscerally re-enter the past, Confessions of a Memory Eater nudges readers to explore their own troves of memory and compare the person who lived them to the person who remembers them.

-McKay McFadden