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.

'Midwife of Venice' delivers a thriller & a love story

"The Midwife of Venice" by Roberta Rich, Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster), February 2012, 352 pp.

It's obvious Roberta Rich did her research when writing "The Midwife of Venice," her debut novel. Set in the Jewish ghetto of Venice as well as on the island of Malta in the late 1500s, the story is rich in details and history as it follows Jewish midwife Hannah and her beloved husband Isaac Levi, a merchant.

The book was originally published on Valentine's Day, and while it is certainly a love story on one level I would say it's more of a testament to the strength of and rights of women, the gifts of midwives, the sanctity of the Jewish religion, and early gynecological experimentation.Yes, there's a lot going on here.

After delivering many babies, Hannah has invented a contraption she calls "birthing spoons" to assist in difficult deliveries. It seems a lot of babies were gruesomely dismembered in attempts to save the mothers when they were breach or difficult births back in the times of this novel. But Hannah's contraption - similar to forceps, I would guess, but usually seen as witchcraft by an outsider - has helped her to improve her birthing success rate greatly.

Hannah's husband Isaac, whom she deeply loves, has encountered misfortune on a trip to sell some wares. He ends up being sold into slavery on the bleak island of Malta but his quick-thinking and ability to read and write keep him from certain death as a galley slave. He tries everything he can think of to find passage on a ship back to his beloved Hannah.

Meanwhile, Hannah is summoned in the middle of the night to assist in the birth of a nobleman's child. This nobleman is a Christian, and at the time, Christians and Jews were great foes. Hannah's decision to defy her own Rabbi to attend to the birth of a Christian child is considered a great offense. But she does so only because the job will pay enough for her to rescue Isaac.

Rich does a good job of creating suspense, as each chapter of the novel jumps from Hannah to Isaac and each ends with a veritable cliffhanger. I won't give away the ending, but suffice to say there's a lot of suspense to this story. The characters, from Hannah and Isaac to Hannah's sister, Assunta - the nun who helps Issac, and the Count who seeks Hannah's help in the very challenging birth of his child are well developed. But for me, something in the telling was unorganic. I had problems with the flow of the story. It wasn't coming together for me as best or as compellingly as it should.

I was interested enough to finish the novel, and I don't regret reading it. I just didn't love it.

Special thanks to Gallery Books for providing a review copy, which has been claimed by my sister-in-law Sherri who is quite a voracious reader!

Book description from the publisher:

Hannah Levi is renowned throughout Venice for her gift at coaxing reluctant babies from their mothers — a gift aided by the secret “birthing spoons” she designed. But when a count implores her to attend to his wife, who has been laboring for days to give birth to their firstborn son, Hannah is torn. A Papal edict forbids Jews from rendering medical treatment to Christians, but the payment he offers is enough to ransom her beloved husband, Isaac, who has been captured at sea. Can Hannah refuse her duty to a suffering woman? Hannah’s choice entangles her in a treacherous family rivalry that endangers the baby and threatens her voyage to Malta, where Isaac, believing her dead in the plague, is preparing to buy his passage to a new life. Not since The Red Tent or People of the Book has a novel transported readers so intimately into the complex lives of women centuries ago or so richly into a story of intrigue that transcends the boundaries of history. 

ROBERTA RICH

About the author:

Roberta Rich divides her time between Vancouver, British Columbia and Colima, Mexico