The idea behind this book is as high concept as a thriller can get: Christine wakes up every day in the bed of a stranger, but it’s always the same stranger, her husband Ben, who has to remind her afresh each day who she is, and how her memory has become so damaged that whenever she goes to sleep, she loses all the new memories she has formed that day. Every morning she looks in the mirror and sees a face that is twenty years older than it should be.
After Ben has re-introduced himself and given her a sketch of their life together before he goes to work, he says, ‘You had to give up work. After your accident. You don’t do anything…You don’t need to. I earn a good enough wage. We get by.’
After giving her this casual summary, he then gives her various instructions on how to occupy herself and keep herself safe in a strange house in a strange neighbourhood, and then announces that they’re going away for the weekend as it’s their anniversary. My flesh crawled with all that implied. Then, once she’s alone, she gets a call from a doctor who claims to be working with her to reclaim her memory, and directs her to a diary that she has been keeping for herself. She sees that she has indeed recorded that day’s appointment with the mysterious doctor, along with an instruction to herself: ‘Don’t tell Ben.’
I was hooked from that moment, and sailed through the rest of the book, despite Christine’s own private Groundhog Day occasionally getting a little monotonous. I enjoyed the scenarios the author set for his luckless heroine, but… actually there are several buts, and it’s hard to discuss them without giving the game away. If SJ Watson had been part of my writing buddy group, we could have helped him smooth these issues out, although perhaps justifiably he feels he did just fine with this book without us sticking our oar(s) in.
Ultimately, this is perfect holiday reading, as it’s a page-turner that makes no demands of the reader whatsoever, other than the ‘Hang on a minute…’ moment that lingers after you put the thing down.
