Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
Text Publishing, $40
It's hard to think of a recent debut novel as original and ambitious in its premise - or as successful in its execution - as S.J. Watson's Before I Go to Sleep. I also can't think of any book I've read this year which so instantly hooks you with its opening - except perhaps Emma Donoghue's Room, with which this shares an unnerving, claustrophobic account of a vulnerable woman fighting for survival.
Christine wakes every morning next to a stranger who, every morning, explains to her that he is her husband, that she is 47, and that an accident some 20 years ago left her unable to retain any new memories. Instead, she has a few photographs and a memo board to remind her of who she is. And she has a journal - one she is writing in secret, at the request of a neurologist her husband does not know she is seeing. That journal helps her piece her story together and which makes up the book.
It's a complicated premise but Watson keeps the story clear and easy to follow. The reader pieces the mysteries of Christine's life together at the same rate she does, which amps up the tension, but it's not just a neat gimmick. Watson writes vividly and with roller-coasting emotion, so you're often overwhelmed by Christine's vulnerability; the nightmare of experiencing grief and loss afresh every day.
There's a small clunk or two. The journal device requires some suspension of disbelief as it reads like a novel, with direct speech and complex accounts of events, rather than the more fragmented, reported nature of most journals, particularly one written in haste and in secret. And the ending, though satisfying, requires one key character to make a slightly too convenient exit, allowing Christine to write the final pieces of the puzzle in her journal.
But they are minor quibbles and do little to detract from what is a complex, well-thought-out, literary psychological thriller.
