The search for a priceless statue is a sound enough premise. It’s in the execution where writers either strike out or strike gold. The amnesiac narrator and reader experience the story in the same uncertain present, searching for the truth of the past and the dangers of the future. It may be a hackneyed device, but at least it’s fair. The trope allows the author to place the reader on the same plain as the character. What are they hiding, and why? Uncertain of who or what to believe, Christine begins to seek an elusive self, even as doing so seems to threaten her very existence.Īmnesia may be rare in real life, but it’s common enough in fiction, and for good reason. Her husband, infinitely understanding and patient, is evasive. She seems to recall having had a child.īut are these memories true or false, facts or fantasies? Dr. She suspects that she was once an author. Yet every memory she uncovers leads to greater confusion. Slowly, she begins to rebuild her past, and with it, her identity. She recognizes the man sleeping next to her: Ben, her husband. In time she remembers her name: Christine Lucas. Nash encourages the woman to keep a written journal.

Some days you wake as if you are a child.”Ī neurophysiologist specializing in the relationship between the physical brain and the subjective nature of cognition, Dr. Every day you wake up as if you are a young woman. You can’t retain new memories, so you’ve forgotten much of what’s happened to you for your entire adult life. Help of sorts arrives in the form of an oddly diffident Dr. It is what we fear when we fear the nothingness produced by Alzheimer’s, perhaps, or some other condition that robs one of mind and memory. It is a kind of hell - an intellectual and emotional state devoid of meaning or emotion. Watson presents a character existing in a condition of perpetual now-ness, a present without context, a life without history. This is life beyond mere confusion or disorientation.

Before i go to sleep watson