Book Review: Before I Go To Sleep
Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Genre: Mystery
This engaging novel takes us into the life of Christine, a woman whose memories are erased every night when she goes to sleep. She is told that her inability to keep memories for more than 24 hours is due to a car accident that happened 21 years ago. She wakes up every day feeling as if she is inside someone else’s body and in bed with a stranger. It’s a chilling scenario, made more so by the fact that she’s an ordinary housewife.
What struck me most about this novel is that it provides intriguing perspective on personal identity. How do we know who we are if we exist only in today, with no reference to who we’ve been in the past or who we might become in the future. How much does having something to look forward to tommorrow or next year, impact our happiness. How do you find purpose? The novel presents these ideas for consideration but never dwells on them or allows them to slow the narrative.
The novel is driven forward by the mystery that shrouds Christine’s life. As the story evolves, we begin to question everything she thinks that she knows. Is Ben the loving husband she thinks that he is or does he have motivation to deceive her? Is he hiding something from her, or is he truly a devoted husband who feeds her a ‘softer’ version of her past in order to make her days more comfortable? How do you trust someone who is a stranger to you every morning when you wake up?
This is a very approachable book with a clean style. The author doesn’t try to impress you by over-writing it. Instead, he gets out of the way and lets the story shine. There is nothing predictable about the story line–you’ll be kept guessing until the very end.
The best compliment that I can give is that the narrative was so compelling that I could not put it down until I finished it. That’s a rare experience for me.
