Before I Go to Sleep, a mystery by S.J. Watson

Before I Go to Sleep is Steve Watson’s first novel, published in 2011.  Ingeniously plotted, it’s the story of a woman who’s lost her memory.  I don’t mean memory loss as in can’t remember the latest dance step, or the words to the ‘Hokey-Pokey.  This is serious shit.  It’s more on the order of “What the F is my name and who is that bastard who just boinked me?”

A nightmare?  Not quite.  She knows from her body and how she dwells on trivial things that she’s a woman, but after that?  She can’t remember last night, or yesterday, or anything past today.  The next morning is more of the same.  “What’s my name again?  You say you’re my husband?”

Of course, when you’re being boinked, being with a stranger has some erotic benefits.

But, plain panic turns to panic-and-angst, twin riders on a motorcycle of confusion, going god only knows where.  I don’t mean a real motorcycle, idiot, that’s a metaphor.

Just when you think things can’t get any worse, doubt jumps onto the page like an unsolvable calculus problem you never understood in the first place.  I’m talking ‘confusion’ with a capital T.  In a world with no absolutes and no yesterdays, whom can you trust.  Lots of people tell you things, but where do truth and trust unite?  You learn.  You forget. Suspicions creep into your life.  You embrace them, then doubt them. 

Every morning gives not a hint of who you are, or where you are, and “Why does that stranger refer to himself as my husband?”  I suspect a lot of women would like that question answered.

Before I Go to Sleep rides on a fiendish plot that sucks you in and glues you to the sharply drawn characters.  This well and smoothly written novel will keep you flipping pages faster than a preacher who’s dropped his Bible in the middle of a sermon.  Once you pick up this extraordinary mystery, don’t plan on getting much sleep.

Before I Go to Sleep is also a motion picture, which I do not plan to see, not wanting Hollywood to tell me what the characters look like and how they act.  I already know.   Nobody gets to mess with my memory.