Before I Go to Sleep, S. J. Watson

What would it be like to wake up each morning in bed with a man that you don’t remember? And to make matters worse, he appears to be married. To creep down to the bathroom trying not to wake anyone up and find the face in the mirror is not yours? Or at least not the twenty seven year old face that you remember?

This is Christine’s life after an accident has left her unable to remember anything prior to when she wakes up each morning and thus her husband, Ben, has to fill in her life story for her every day.  However, at the suggestion of Dr Nash, a doctor she is seeing without Ben’s knowledge, Christine has been keeping a diary. Dr Nash rings her each day to tell her where to find the diary and as she documents the flashbacks of memory that she experiences, she discovers that Ben is not always telling her the truth. Is Ben doing this to shield her from painful memories as he says or is there another, more sinister reason. Can Ben be trusted?

I finished this recently released psychological thriller last weekend and couldn’t put it down. The novel is told via the diary that Christine writes, and you feel so sorry for her, thankful that her memory problems are not yours. But then, there is the chilling realisation of how vulnerable Christine is as she relies on the people around her for knowledge of every aspect of her life. The setting of a suburban house, with an ordinary couple, makes the novel more compelling as it so closely resembles my own domestic situation (although with memory intact), and the constant question of whether a memory is truth or the result of a damaged brain kept me on edge, and wanting to find out what happens next.

I have to say that I had worked out the conclusion a little before the main character, but I think that this didn’t detract from the entertainment of the story. The other thing I liked about the novel is that it is well written. Often in the crime/thriller genre, the quality of the writing is overlooked with the emphasis on an author getting as many novels produced in a year as possible.  Thankfully, this is not the case with Before I Go to Sleep which made it an enjoyable read.