The 10 best books on amnesia | Fiction

I I have always been fascinated by human memory: its capacity, its acuity, its connections with emotions and our basic senses. Somehow, the gray grime stain on my skull manages to recall everything from the fraud statute I memorized in law school to the lyrics of just about any new wave single released in the 1980s. It’s the reason why The one where a puff of Ralph Lauren Polo cologne takes me back to a nightmare groping in the cab of a pickup truck with the high school quarterback.

But despite the remarkable breadth and depth of memory, we also know that it is fallible. Fragile. Even manipulable. Cognitive research has shown, for example, that eyewitness memory is much more reliable and much less accurate than we instinctively believe. If we can’t believe our own memories, how can we trust ourselves? Memory is also reversible, and what we have forgotten is often as revealing as what we remember.

In my new book, the girl that was (titled Meet Me in the USA), Hope Miller has lost not just some of her memories, but all of them, after she was found dumped from an overturned SUV. Doctors initially thought that she would regain her memories in days or weeks, but 15 years later, she has built a path forward in the small town where she was found, under a name of her own choosing. But what if the foundation on which your new life was built is a fraud? When Hope suddenly disappears, the search for her involves a hunt for the memories she may have been running from.

Lack of memory provides endless stories, both fictional and factual, classic and new. Here are some of my favorites.

one. Before I Go to Sleep by SJ Watson
Not surprisingly, Watson’s debut in the thriller took the book world by storm when it was released in 2011. We all crave sleep, but what if every time you sleep, your memory wipes out? Christine is in this unenviable position. Worse still, the person you trust to redirect your daily routine might not be trustworthy.

two. Under My Skin by Lisa Unger
A year after the unsolved murder of her husband Jack, a grieving Poppy is toying with a serious cocktail of sleep deprivation, pills and alcohol abuse. Between nightmares and blackouts, you can’t remember entire blocks of time, and what you can remember can be real or completely imagined. As she grows closer to the truth about her husband, her grip on reality only grows dimmer, and now there is a stranger lingering on the periphery of her life. Or is there?

3. What Alice Forgot About Liane Moriarty
From what Alice Love can remember, she’s not yet 30, she’s married to the love of her life, she’s expecting her first child … until she wakes up on a gym floor and lands in the hospital only to find out that he is 39 years old. mother of three children about to get divorced. As he tries to rebuild his life over the past decade, he wonders if perhaps amnesia is a blessing in disguise.

Four. The man who mistook his wife for an Oliver Sacks hat
Do you remember the character of Guy Pearce in the movie Memento, who woke up every day without being able to form new memories? Renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks also proved to be a talented storyteller in this collection that explores that neurological condition (called anterograde amnesia) and others. Sacks presents the patients’ medical records with extraordinary compassion.

5. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Award, Barnes’ acclaimed novel addresses how memories dictate our perception of our place in the world and what happens when we forget something intrinsic to it. If you don’t think about your past often, you will after reading this captivating story.

6. Ayer by Felicia Yap
Imagine an alternate reality in which social distinctions are not based on wealth, race, or class, but on the ability to remember. In Felicia Yap’s inventive debut, the masses are the “monkeys” who have only one day of memory; elite “duos” can retain two; and everyone should trust their written journals, which may or may not be accurate. When a woman is murdered, how can anyone determine the truth, since memories are constantly being erased and altered?

7. Chris Bohjalian’s stewardess
The memory loss resulting from a blackout leaves Cassandra Bowden flying without a proverbial net when she wakes up in a Dubai hotel room alongside a dead man, unsure if she killed him. What should a single professional woman do? Lying to colleagues and the FBI might not be the best option. But after doing just that, finding out who the killer is could be your only way out.

8. In the forest of Tana French
Childhood trauma is difficult to overcome, and no more so than the murder of a childhood friend. This is what Garda detective Rob Ryan faces when a boy is found murdered in the same forest where he survived an attack of which he has little recollection. Can Ryan rely on his fragments of memories to solve his current and childhood case?

9. Petina Gappah’s Book of Memory
Here “memory” plays a double role. Memory is the name of the novel’s narrator, a woman with albinism who writes her story from a maximum security prison in Zimbabwe where she is being held for murdering a white man. As Memory struggles to recount the events that led her to a jail cell, she must navigate a tangle of sometimes confusing memories of her complicated past.

10 Last words of Michael Koryta
It is not often that a suspect in an unsolved murder is the one who calls for the reopening of an unsolved case. Ten years ago, Sarah Martin disappeared into an elaborate unmapped cave system in a small southern Indiana town. Days later, Ridley Barnes emerged from the caves carrying the lifeless body of the teenager. Barnes was the natural suspect, but he insisted that he did not remember how or where he found Sarah, not even if she was dead or alive. Now he is the one who asks private investigator Mark Novak to take a second look at him and help him find out if he is a murderer.

Faber publishes Alafair Burke’s The Girl She Was. To assist the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at the Guardian bookstore. Shipping charges may apply.