Read this before bed and you'll likely lose sleep

I've read a lot of really amazing debut novels this year. Amor Towles' "Rules of Civility," Roberta Rich's "Midwife of Venice," Paul Elwork's "The Girl Who Would Speak For the Dead," and "The Language of Flowers" by Vanessa Diffenbaugh all come to mind. 

"Before I Go To Sleep," by S.J. Watson (June 2011, HarperCollins, $14.99 paperback, 368 pp.) also falls in that category. The suspense/thriller of a different sort was given to me by my sister, who predicted I would tear through it. I finally picked it up last week and just like Jennifer said (she's always right!), this is a book I didn't want to put down.

The book is told from the viewpoint of Christine Lucas, a 47-year-old British woman who wakes up every day with no memory. She wakes up feeling like she's 20, and then looks at her self in the mirror and sees her body aged beyond the age she thinks she is and has trouble putting it all together (we all do that ... right?)

Christine wakes up every day in bed with a stranger - one we learn is her husband Ben. Ben does his best to fill Christine in on the pertinent details of her life before heading out the door to work each day, leaving her with a list of things she might do (laundry, walk, etc.). Christine spends the rest of the day trying to figure out who she is and how she's become this way.

Ben tells Christine she was hit by a car years ago and the resulting head trauma has permanently - and likely irrevocably - damaged her memory. Christine can conjure no memory of the incident, and, as with all the other facts about herself, she has to take Ben's word for what happened.

Unbeknownst to Ben, Christine is sought out by a physician who claims he's making advances in the realm of memory loss. Dr. Nash advises Christine to start keeping a journal, and to put it in a place where every day she can read it and re-learn the memories of the day before - and possibly discover new memories along the way. 

Christine does start to keep a journal and it DOES help her make strides with her memory. However, those memories don't always come without a price. She remembers giving birth to a son, Adam, only to learn from Ben that Adam has died. She remembers she was a writer, and discovers she published a novel and was working on a second when she had her accident. Christine remembers her best friend from college, Claire, only to learn from Ben that she and Claire had a falling out and that Claire since has left the country, possibly to New Zealand. And, most intriguingly, she starts to remember the details of a brutal attack by a lover - a strangulation and near-drowning. Ben tells her he knows about the lover and has forgiven her. But Christine still has questions.

So, the reader follows Christine through her days, waking up next to Ben. Sometimes she's naked and so is he. Often he tries to make love to her, although she feels she doesn't even know him. The creep factor just keeps rising.

With the help of her journal, Christine learns quite a bit about her past, and can literally see the lies that it seems Ben tells her each day. He will omit the fact that she has a son from the daily update, for instance.

It seems that Ben is the only person Christine can trust, other than her doctor. But then Christine finds Claire and rekindles their friendship. Claire helps Christine to remember many of the details of her life that she's forgotten since her accident. And the creepy feeling the reader has an inkling of starts to get stronger and stronger.

This novel will keep you turning pages into the wee hours of the morning to try to figure out just what's going on in Christine's life. Something doesn't add up. Well, a LOT of things don't add up.

"Before I Go to Sleep" is not what I'd call great literature, but it is a good read.

I'm not going to spoil the thrilling climax of the story, but I will say it answered some questions but left me with a few more.

Once you've read the book and want to compare questions the book left you with, let me know!

Book summary (from the author's website):

Christine wakes up every morning in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar man. She looks in the mirror and sees an unfamiliar, middle-aged face. And every morning, the man she has woken up with must explain that he is Ben, he is her husband, she is 47 years old, and a terrible accident two decades earlier decimated her ability to form new memories.

But it’s the phone call from a Dr. Nash, a neurologist who claims to be working with Christine without her husband’s knowledge, that directs her to her journal, hidden in the back of her closet. For the past few weeks, Christine has been recording her daily activities—tearful mornings with Ben, sessions with Dr. Nash, flashes of scenes from her former life—and rereading past entries, relearning the facts of her life as retold by the husband she is completely dependent upon. As the entries build up, Christine asks many questions. What was life like before the accident? Why did she and Ben never have a child? What has happened to Christine’s best friend? And what exactly was the horrific accident that caused such a profound loss of memory?

Every day, Christine must begin again the reconstruction of her past. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more un-believable it seems.

Click here for a link to download a PDF of the first chapter.

Click here to view the book trailer. Apparently this is the trailer from the Australian version of the book. It's kind of dark.

About the author:

S.J. WATSON

Steve 'S J' Watson was born in the Midlands, lives in London and worked in the National Health Service for a number of years.

In 2009, Watson was accepted into the first Faber Academy Writing a Novel Course: "Before I Go to Sleep" was the result, a novel that attracted attention from many of the UK's major publishers. Rights have already been sold in 30 languages and a film version is due to beginning shooting later this year.

Read a Q&A with Watson about "Before I Go To Sleep" here.

Visit the author's website here.

Philly-area author's debut transports you to the melancholy, moneyed Main Line of a century past

I received a review copy of Paul Elwork's debut novel, "The Girl Who Would Speak For the Dead," (Berkley, March 2012, $15, 324 pp.) just in time to tuck it in my suitcase and take it along on a recent vacation.

The sense of foreboding in the novel cast a slight chill on the 84-degree days of my retreat.

At first I thought it was going to be a ghost story, but I changed my tune after delving in. This book is more of a mystery that spans the generations who reside in a grand family mansion on the banks of the Delaware River around the first World War.

Throughout there's an atmosphere of  things left unsaid at a time when people were slow to reveal their true feelings and passions.

Elwork, who writes from somewhere closeby in the Philly 'burbs, modeled Ravenwood, the riverfront mansion setting for the novel, on Philadelphia's Glen Foerd estate, now part of the Fairmount Park system.

Once the site of grand parties in happier times, Ravenwood has become a solitary refuge for wealthy and reclusive young widow Naomi Stewart, her 13-year-old twins, and the help.

Twins Emily and Michael, bored during their 13th summer - the summer of 1925- come up with a scheme to trick the other kids in the neighborhood into thinking they can communicate with ghosts. That Emily can, that is. Michael acts more like her manager.

Emily possesses a "talent" that allows her to (and this can't be good for a young girl's bones) make an eerie reverberating sound with her ankle without appearing to move a muscle. The sound is so unusual that, once Emily discovers she can produce it, she uses it to trick her brother Michael into thinking he's being visited by something otherworldly - perhaps a ghost that makes noises that sound like knocks.

Michael is so impressed he puts together a seance of sorts with their neighborhood friends. The meeting place is a small cottage on the estate that's fairly close to the river. Surrounded by her friends in the small outbuilding known as the Tea House, Emily calls forth the spirit of her great-aunt, Regina, who died an accidental death at a young age decades before at the riverside. Regina "answers" questions via one knock or two, and the children are duly impressed.

Word of Emily's "Spirit Knocking" ability spreads from the twins' friends to the friends' parents, though somehow Naomi never catches wind of it. At this time in history, with so many loved ones dead in World War II, there's no shortage of people who are missing someone, no dearth of unfinished business. That goes, too, for Naomi and her late husband, Donald.

The reader catches glimpses of Naomi and Donald at earlier dates, and of Donald's relatives who built Ravenwood - a place that contains many secrets. I won't give away the story, especially since you can win it for yourself (see below). Suffice to say Emily and Michael find themselves facing real consequences of their fake mischief.

My poor cell-phone photography of Elwork's book as it visited
with me one of  Florida's barrier islands.
I could've at least gotten the ocean in the photo!

What I found most intriguing about "The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead" was that Elwork sustained a dark and melancholy tone throughout.

While I liked the book, there were times when I felt the pacing lagged, and in parts read like it was geared toward a much-younger audience.

That said, Elwork's writing style in this debut is both unique and charming. His novel is worth a read, preferably somewhere your toes can be touching sand - or the soft lapping of the Delaware River - while you do.

To learn more ... 

Check out Elwork's website for more book- and author-related information.

Click here to read Terrible Minds blogger Chuck Wendig's entertaining March interview with Paul Elwork. It's here that I read that Elwork is a fellow fan of the hoppy deliciousness of IPAs.

About the author (from his website):

PAUL ELWORK

Paul Elwork has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Temple University and a master’s degree in English from Arcadia University. His fiction has appeared in various literary journals, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Philadelphia Stories, Short Story America, Word Riot, and Johnny America. He lives on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

"The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead," his first novel, was released in hardcover by Amy Einhorn Books in March 2011. The paperback edition was released by Berkley Books in  March 2012.

Want to win it? 

If you would like to "win" my slightly used paperback review copy of the book, simply comment on this post with your email address. I'll contact you to find out where to mail the book if you are selected.