The Month of Lost Memory

Forgotten
by Cat Patrick

It seems as though June is the month of lost memories. I’m not making some philosophical statement; it’s just that I recently reviewed Before I Go to Sleep, an adult title out of HarperCollins and am now looking at Forgotten, a teen read about memory from Hachette. Both are debut novels, and both deal with characters that lose their memories when they go to sleep. Fortunately for me the similarities end there.

London Lane is a 16-year-old girl who cannot remember what happened the day before. Every morning she must read through a pile of notes detailing minor things such as homework and clothing, and major things like her boyfriend and why her best friend isn’t speaking to her. The thing is, London might not know about yesterday, but she does remember what is going to happen tomorrow. London remembers the future. Once the future becomes the past she forgets it. So, when she has no forward memory of her boyfriend Luke and when she starts to become plagued by dark and disturbing nightmares, she must recover her past to try and save her future with Luke.

Convoluted concept I know, but it actually works fairly well. The author draws out the revelation of London’s affliction so that the reader knows there is an issue, knows it deals with her memory, but isn’t quite sure what is really going on. Just waiting for that reveal was entertaining by itself. I really like the unique idea of memory as presented here, I have never read a book where the character only remembers forward and I loved Patrick’s ingenuity in creating such a misery. What a brilliant idea!

Unfortunately, while the idea is imaginative and unique, the plotting falls short. The why or her misfortune is answered—sort of; enough to somewhat mollify my curiosity, if not answer all of my questions. The problem is that Patrick throws in this mystery—why she can’t remember Luke from the future, her disturbing nightmares—but she forced the revelation, it spews forth quickly and is fixed far too easily. There is a very deus ex machina feel to the second half of this ending; it’s too convenient, too loose in its conception, and too formulaic for such a fascintating plot.

Endings can make or break a book. If done well, the book is brilliant, if done poorly and brilliant book can become mediocre. This is the case with Forgotten. I think teens will enjoy the love story, and those who are not too discerning will not mind the suddenness of the revelations and resolutions, but with the bevy of fully formed teen novels lurking around on bookshelves Forgotten just might find it’s name to be prophetic of it’s reception.





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Before I Go to Sleep: A Review

Before I Go to Sleep
By S.J. Watson

The subject of memory, or the lack there of, is the premise of this debut psychological suspense. Christine wakes up every morning shocked by her surroundings. Sometimes she is a small child, at others a twenty-something university student, but never is she the middle-aged woman that appears in the mirror. Christine suffers from a form of amnesia slightly similar to that made famous in the film Memento; every time she falls asleep she loses her memories; an affliction that has haunted her (although she does not know it) for twenty years. Her life and memories rest within the hands of her husband Ben, a man she has no memory of.

We are all liars. We change the past in our minds to save ourselves the pain and humiliation of past deeds and events. We alter the good and make it better to heighten our sense of euphoria. We dampen the bad on occasion, but sometimes we blow it up, making it far worse than it was in reality. We are the masters of our own minds, memories, and thoughts—at least we think we are, but sometimes we are fooled by our own psyches, tricked into believing the fantasies we’ve created, and never able to draw the truth from beneath the layers of deceits and half truths we have fed ourselves. This concept is one, which makes the premise of Before I Go to Sleep so compelling. Christine cannot discern what her truths are, she has no memory, only brief snippets from her life, rarely the same each day, to guide her. When she begins, at the behest of her doctor, to record her thoughts and snippets of remembrance in a journal, the question for both her and the reader becomes, “how much can you trust yourself not to manipulate the truth”.

As Christine, with the aid of her journal, begins to “remember” more she must choose who she can trust—herself, her friend, husband, or doctor—because she has remembered something and someone is willing to kill her to ensure her memory never awakens again.

The thrill of this novel is that the reader only ever knows as much as the narrator. Christine’s life unfolds for us as the pages of her journal, Watson keeps us just as much in the dark confusing world of Christine’s memories as he does with Christine herself. I do have to say that I figured a few elements out rather early, but Watson did enough misleading, to lead me on a few different paths, none of which were remotely close to the final outcome. Watson weaves an interesting tale, he deftly handles the horror of Christine’s situation, sucking the reader into her fears, and the panic and utter terror that we would all feel in her situation. An impressive debut, one sure to hook readers quickly and successfully.





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