So I didn't manage to re-read Before I Go To Sleep at a reasonable pace. It is an unreasonably good book. Even when I knew what happened, I still had to read it as quickly as possible. In fact, I finished it with perfect timing, just as my train pulled into Piccadilly. Unfortunately, reading those kind of scenes under that kind of time pressure (I couldn't stop reading to get off the train and on with my life before finishing it! Unthinkable) meant I felt incredibly stressed when I was finished. The action is so real and the character's anxiety and confusion so relateable that I felt as if I had literally gone through the conclusion.
Losing memory is a pretty terrifying thing, because it would leave you so vulnerable. For most of the things in our lives we hold to be real, this can only be verified due to past experiences that we remember and check for truth. If that was gone, you couldn't trust yourself, let alone anyone else.
Having said that, even when our memories work they are nowhere near as accurate as we believe them to be. The brain can and does make many things up. Things we could swear had happened, or happened in a certain way. Our perceptions of our own perceptions are set in quicksand, not stone.
On a completely unrelated side note, I finally bought Embassytown! And its good, but its really confusing/difficult to understand. I realise the central premise is, that's what drew me to it, but the whole setting, so many little details which are almost incomrehensible. Very alien.
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