Before I Go To Sleep

I try to breathe, to relax, but find I cannot. There are two of me now in the same body; one is a forty-seven-year-old woman, calm, polite, aware of what kind of behavior is appropriate and what is not, and the other is in her twenties, and screaming. I cannot decide which is me, but the only noise I hear is that of distant traffic and the shouts of children from the park, and so I guess it must be the first.

(From Christine’s journal) Something has been added. Something unexpected, terrifying. More terrifying than anything else I have seen today. There, beneath my name, in blue ink and capital letters, are the words:

DON’T TRUST BEN

SJ Watson, author of Before I go to Sleep, has written the latest sensation in the genre I call “Woman in Peril” – a genre that has a little mystery, a few thriller-like elements, and is punctuated by a woman who must, in some way, save herself. Sophie Hannah is a author who writes a lot of these types of books as is Chevy Stevens who wrote Still Missing. I haven’t liked the Hannah books I have read and also didn’t care much for Still Missing so I was a little hesitant to pick up Before I go to Sleep and after reading it I will say that it was both a hit and a miss for me.

Christina, who has suffered an accident several years before, wakes up each morning in a state of amnesia. She is unable to remember the day before or even who the man in bed with her is. She thinks she is either a child or a young woman in her early twenties. So in horrifying minutes after she wakes up, her husband Ben fills her in on what is going on and she looks at photographs taped by the bathroom mirror as she shakily tries to gain footing in a body she does not feel is her own. To complicate matters, when Ben is at work, Christine gets a phone call from a Doctor Nash who tells her he has been treating her. Dr. Nash meets with Christine and hands her back her journal she has been writing. Christine hides the journal each night and in the morning Dr. Nash calls her and tells her where to look. Most of the book is Christine’s journal so the reader is learning things along with Christine. We don’t know who to trust; we don’t know what is happening or why; and it is all very frightening.

What I did like:

I thought the author did a very good job on the subject of memory –the impact loss of memory has, how scary it is to not have memory to grab onto, or ground you, as well as the difference between memory and invention and how they can interchange with each other. Watson also does a good job with atmosphere contrasting the horrors Christine goes through each day with the normalness of everyday living. I also liked the tension the reader feels about not knowing what happened or will happened.

What I didn’t like:

I had a hard time telling where the journal left off and where real time began. Perhaps that was the author’s intention but I found it a little irritating. I also did not feel the tension the author was trying to create between the two men and who should Christine trust. I had very decided ideas and nothing the author wrote persuaded me any differently. Finally, I found some portions of the plot to be implausible in part because the author focused so much on Christine that it became more difficult to ascertain other character’s motivations.

A few people that I know through the internet are currently reading this book and most of them are not happy with it so far. On the other hand, other reviewers have really liked this book. My final impressions – it was an easy, quick read with enough tension to keep me turning the page. I wanted to know what happened to Christine and will happen to her in the future.

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