BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP
By S.J. Watson
Doubleday. 366 pages. £12.99 (h/b)
ISBN 978 0 857 520 173
Christine had a traumatic accident when she was 29 and lost her memory.
What is more, every time she goes to sleep what she has learned about herself during the day is erased. Now she is 47, a woman who wakes up every morning astonished to find herself a middle-aged woman in bed with a husband she didn’t know she had. Christine has her husband, Ben, to rely upon and Dr. Nash, a researcher whom she meets secretly. He reminds her to write in her journal, so that each morning she can read what happened the day before. At the front of her journal is written ‘Don’t trust Ben’. So begins Before I go to sleep, a much-hyped book which raises the questions of who you are apart from your memories, and who you can trust when you have no strong sense of yourself. These questions are the reason I bought the book; they seem so pertinent to our culture, in which identity is a lifestyle choice and memories are disposable.
Those questions are not answered or explored in any significant way, unfortunately. Instead Christine’s situation is a plot conceit for a thriller, which keeps you reading despite the glaring flaws in plausibility. I’d love to say that this is because of characterisation or beautiful writing, but, again, not so. Christine’s world is intentionally bland, and all the characters seem merely names, as lifeless as the photos stuck to her bathroom mirror. Perhaps this is the fault of a plot (which I can’t properly divulge here without spoiling the end for any who still want to read it after my review!) based on memory loss and narrated by a woman who knows so little.
You can tell, therefore, that I’m not really recommending Before I go to sleep. It is an acceptable thriller, but not one that lives up to all the plaudits plastered to the cover. This book joins the many popular books which use showy plot devices to cover inadequate writing. Why not try instead a satisfying story from Ann Tyler (I’m reading The Amateur Marriage right now — absolutely brilliant!) or a good history (I’m about to try Mao’s Great Famine). Before I go to sleep is a reminder to me — don’t believe the hype!
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