| Title: | Before I Go to Sleep | |
|---|---|---|
| Author: | S. J. Watson | |
| Publication Date: | June 2011 | |
| Publisher's Description | 'As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I'm still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me ...' Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love - all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story. Welcome to Christine's life. | |
| My rating: | **.5 | |
Warning, totally spoilerific review.
I suppose I should have known that I wouldn’t love this book, because I’m not a fan of “Trust me, you have amnesia” kinds of stories (50 First Dates, I’m looking at you). Still, I thought that I might like it. In a way, I did, although I think that wanting readers to believe in the amount of coincidences and instances of negligence that had to converge before this novel’s circumstances could exist is asking too much. I believe in the goodness of people, but I possess a healthy amount of skepticism, and everything about the setting of this novel set off my creepometer.
The main thing I wondered about was how could NOBODY think to verify the identity of the man to whom they released an amnesiac? Really? Jokes about the British NHS aside, that’s just unforgivably negligent.
I did like how this book combined both an unreliable narrator and intrigue. Christine’s unreliable narration was due to her amnesia, not dishonesty, which made the effect even more chilling: she simply didn’t remember enough to know whether she was telling the truth or not. The main thing that puzzled me was why her memory suddenly started to come back at this point in her life. Could it only be the help of her new doctor, who hadn’t given her any drugs or special treatments AT ALL, or was being exposed to awful Mike what truly made her remember who she was? This book left me with more questions than answers, and not in a good way. The one clear thought I had was that poor Christine possessed truly awful relatives and friends, and my hope is that reclaiming her memory was just the first step in becoming free of the lot of them.
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