Before I Go To Sleep
S J Watson
‘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.
I’m glad I didn’t read ‘psychological thriller’ before I purchased this book, because it might have put my somewhat small-minded book-snob side off buying it. And how glad I am that I bought and read this book. It is totally gripping, wonderfully constructed and beautifully written.
Before I Go To Sleep follows Christine, who suffers from amnesia, try to cope with every day life. Each time Christine falls asleep, her memory is erased. Sometimes she wakes in the morning expecting to be a child and discovers that she’s actually a married woman. Sometimes Christine remembers slightly more, but never really anything beyond when she was 20 or so. So when she looks in the mirror each morning and doesn’t recognise the person staring back at her, Christine’s horror starts afresh every day. Christine certainly doesn’t remember her long-suffering husband, Ben, who is trying to help her make sense of her life – which she always forgets as soon as she falls asleep.
However, it quickly transpires that Christine and Ben have developed systems to cope with Christine’s memory loss. There’s notes every where in their house to prompt her, remind her who she is. But it seems Christine is also trying to help herself in her own way too. In secret, Christine has begun seeing Dr Nash, who thinks they can help her regain her memory. Dr Nash encourages Christine to keep a journal, recording her day and what she remembers. Dr Nash phones or visits Christine most days to remember this. This journal is what makes up most of the novel.
The problem for Christine – and therefore thrill of this book – is that she doesn’t know who to trust. Why has she decided to keep the journal a secret from her loving, patient husband? Who is Dr Nash and what does he really want? And what the hell happened to Christine to make her memory disappear? As I hurriedly read each page to find out, I found myself suspecting everyone around Christine of being sinister.
Watson has written multi-dimensional characters, which I found only added to the intrigue. One minute I really felt for Ben, who loved his wife so much but had to deal with her not knowing who he was – the next minute I thought Ben was a little too over-protective of Christine. Or I’d think Dr Nash was so lovely and selfless, then I’d decide he was surely up to no good and was going to exploit Christine’s fragile state. In the end, the story came to a gripping climax that I hadn’t guessed at all.
I loved this book for much more than it being a gripping read. It invoked emotions and the characters definitely felt really vivid while I was reading it. It made me ponder life and got my brain cogs going about what life would be like if my memory was stripped from me. So if you’re like me and think “psychological thriller – ugh, not for me” I’d say give this book a second thought because it’s so much more than that.
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4 Comments
I’m the complete opposite to you in the sense that ‘psychological thriller’ would make me want to read it, but I definitely agree that it’s an excellent book! Very cleverly written, and I loved the twist.
This review reminds me a bit of the Christopher Nolan film Memento with Guy Pierce. Except Guy Pierce’s character tattoos clues on his body about the person he suspects of murdering his wife.
I thoroughly enjoyed the intrigue of that film and this book looks set to grip me in the same way.
I have just purchased this book and am so looking forward to it.
This book was FANTASTIC. The pace was so fast and constant that I was ploughing through the pages in a feverish state, especially towards the end when I had a (horrible!) inkling about what was coming. I’ll be recommending this book to anyone and everyone!
Hello Zoe! I am a Judging Covers reviewer too & I loved this book so much, I wanted to post my review here too. Hope you don’t mind! :o)
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Before I go to sleep, I must write in my journal what happened today. Otherwise I’ll wake up tomorrow and I won’t remember a single thing. I’ll look at myself in the bathroom mirror and see an older woman, one with wrinkles staring back at me and I’ll wonder where twenty years have gone.
This is the dilemma of amnesia sufferer Christine . The naked man in the bed next to her isn’t actually a one-night stand stranger but her husband. The photographs lined along the bathroom wall are carefully placed to remind her every single morning of who she is. Her husband has become matter of fact about it; showing her the noticeboard in the kitchen, giving her jobs to do, letting her see a scrapbook of her life, and then he goes off to work.
So what does she do when he goes to work? She receives a phone-call from a doctor, who encourages her to write a journal and the next thing she’s writing a day-by-day account, placing her life together like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to find out who she really is.
I’m not normally a fan of thrillers. I’m far too much of a scaredy cat, opting for chick-lit instead. However, this book pulled me in. There was the hint that something was going to go wrong but nothing too drastic to make me switch the kindle off in trepidation. Just the creak of a stair; the hand gripping the arm a bit too much; subtle hints the whole way through. And then there was the unravelling of her story. I’m not going to give anything away, I will just say that as each day went on, Christine discovered a little more about her difficult past, making this an absolute page turner.
I felt that this book wasn’t just about loss of memory. I felt that the author was tackling issues about marriage, infidelity, domestic violence, a sense of identity, age, accomplishments, motherhood, the list goes on.
It’s a joy to find a book that you become engrossed in; one that makes you get up early so that you can squeeze in a bit more reading time before work; a book that I gobbled up in just a few days. I couldn’t wait to get to the last chapter to find out what happened, yet at the same time, I didn’t want the book to end. This is a debut novel from S J Watson and I can’t wait to read his next.
This book is being made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman.