Before I Go to Sleep

Watson. S.J. Before I Go to Sleep. New York: HarperCollins. 2011. Print.

First Sentences:

The bedroom is strange.

Unfamiliar. I don't know where I am, how I came to be here. I don't know how I'm going to get home.

Description:

A woman wakes one morning with no memory of where she is or even who she is. There is a greying man snoring in bed beside her. When she looks into the bathroom mirror she views a woman in her late 40's, a disturbing image to her as her last memory is her as a college student. Decades apparently have passed and are completely unknown to her. There are photos pasted to the mirror of a man, the same man from the bed, with the notation that "This is Ben, your husband." Again, she does not recognize him. 

So begins each and every day for Christine in S.J. Watson's imaginative novel, Before I Go to Sleep. When Christine faces Ben over breakfast, he has to tell her he is indeed her husband, they are very much in love, and that she was in a serious car accident that put her in a coma and took away her ability to retain memories. As her "first day" passes, she finds she is able to remember things that happen during day, but as she sleeps at night these memories are erased and she again has to re-meet Ben and learn of her past each and every morning. 

A phone call from a Dr. Nash informs her that she and the doctor have been meeting secretly to work on her memory loss. Dr. Nash is a local neuropsychologist who has given Christine a notebook to record anything during the day so she can read it and understand who she is and what she knows. Dr. Nash asks her to keep their visits and the notebook secret from Ben because her husband doesn't want Christine to go through any more heartbreaking experiences with doctors.

When every scrap of information about her life comes to Christine from strangers she just met, she begins to wonder who can she really trust? Christine feels Ben, in answering her questions, has not been telling the entire truth. Is he protecting her from further disturbance to their settled life? When confronted, he tells her the real story and she secretly writes it down in her notebook to consult the next day. But she also wonders whether Dr. Nash is all he claims to be as well. 

And where are her former friends from before the accident? And why has she written "Don't Trust Ben" on the opening page of her notebook? Questions, questions, and more questions every day from Christine make her even more confused. 

Watson has a gripping writing style in his stream of consciousness narrative from Christine's confused mind. We quickly grasp Christine's confusion, her fears, and her drive to understand who she and these people around her really are. As Christine repeatedly consults her journal to relearn about her past and present, she slowly adds new information about her life. Then, she too begins to keep secrets from various people.

Riveting right up to the final pages when the climax and truth are finally revealed, and she finally understands her past and future.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Shreve, Anita. Stella Bain

A woman wakes up in a French military field hospital during World War I with no memory of her identity or how she arrived in this situation. She painstakingly struggles to uncover her past and what the future hold for her. (previously reviewed here)

Stella Bain

Shreve, Anita. Stella Bain. New York: Little, Brown. 2013. Print

First Sentences:

Sunrise glow through canvas panels. 

Foul smell of gas gangrene. Men moaning all around her. Pandemonium and chaos.

She floats inside a cloud. Cottony, a little dingy. Pinpricks of light summon her to wakefulness. She drifts, and then she sleeps.

Description:

So wakes the heroine of Anita Shreve's' Stella Bain, in a French military field hospital during World War I. She is wearing a Voluntary Aid Detachment uniform, has minor shrapnel wounds on her feet, but is otherwise untouched ... except she has no memory of anything prior to her awakening.

No one else in the hospital knows who she is either or where she came from as she was dropped off in the middle of the night by someone with a cart. Even her name is a mystery. "Stella Bain" is a guess she feels sounds right to her and she takes it, but she is far from certain of this or anything else.

So who is she? With her American accent, what is she doing in France prior to the United States entry into the War? How did she get injured? And what will she do now?

Over the next weeks, vague pictures come into her mind and she is able to sketch them: a small garden; a broken-down cottage surrounded by ominous trees of a forest; a half-completed face of a man; and another man much more ominous. The significance of these pictures, even where she gained her ability to draw, remains unknown.

She does sense that she was once an ambulance driver, so takes on this dangerous responsibility for the field hospital while she tries to remember something, anything. 

Then, she overhears a word, "Admiralty," which seems somehow familiar to her. During a leave, she feels it important to catch a transport to England in search of this place. But sickness overtakes her and the quest for the Admiralty and her memory (and name) must wait as she recovers in the home of a stranger and his family.

Stella Bain is a quiet, spare story made compelling by the strong personality of the narrator and her struggles to learn anything about her life prior to the field hospital. Sentences are short, and the tone is almost whispered even with the background of war and survival. The slowly unfolding mystery, the characters who play roles in her former life and those who try to help her, and the setting of France and England during the Great War each tug at readers with their hints of a much, much bigger picture.  

This book is quietly compelling. It is never heavy-handed nor violent, but calm, collected, and so fascinating that it is very difficult to put aside. The bits and pieces of Stella's life tantalize her in their incompleteness like the beginning stages of a large jigsaw puzzle. To her, the first steps are impossibly hard, but somehow she retains hopes the puzzle (and her life) will become more clear and the pieces start to fall together. That is the hope of Stella.

Highly recommended for those who love mysteries, strong characters, love, and even the realities of World War I and the effects it has on soldiers, volunteers, and civilians.


Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Hochschild, Adam. To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918  

Highly detailed and well-written history of the causes, daily decisions, personalities, and outcomes of World War I. (Previously reviewed here).

Brockmole, Jessica. Letters from Skye: A Novel  

Series of fictionalized, sensitive letters written between a young student and World War I soldier from America, and a recluse poet from the Isle of Skye. (Previously reviewed here).