It’s a novel about a woman who, having lost her memory in a traumatic accident 20 years earlier, wakes every morning to a husband and life and body she does not remember and has to rediscover daily.
Christine, who turns out to be 47, wakes as the novel opens in an unfamiliar bedroom next to a man she for a moment thinks is an aging one-night stand. Instead the man is Ben, who says he’s her husband, that he’s always loved her, that she was in a serious car accident 20 years earlier and suffers from a rare form of amnesia: Although she can retain memories throughout the day, they are wiped out entirely overnight. Since memory is the largest part of identity, Christine truly does not know who she is. Losing one’s memory, it seems, differs little from losing one’s mind.
As Christine begins a desperate effort to reconstruct her life, she finds that she has been consulting a doctor, apparently without Ben’s knowledge. And she is keeping a journal, which constitutes the backbone of the novel. Dr. Nash must call her daily to remind her of her existence – and that of the journal. Every day she reads it afresh, which is the only way she can progress.
But soon cracks begin to appear in the constructed narrative. Ben seems to be keeping information from her. Was she a writer before the accident? Did she have a child? Can she trust Ben? Does she love him?
Aided by her daily secretive scribblings and re- readings of the journal, Christine begins to experience snatches of the past, but they remain inchoate, elusive. Until … well, I will say no more; find out for yourselves and enjoy the last long weekend of the summer!
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