Before I Go to Sleep

AUTHOR: S. J. Watson

PUBLISHED: 2011

GENRE: Thriller/Mystery

Every night, when Christine goes to sleep, she forgets everything about herself.  EVERYTHING.  When she wakes up in the morning, the only thing she knows is that she is in bed with a strange man in a strange house with no idea how she got there.  Every morning, the strange man, who is really her husband, Ben, must coach her through her panic, reminding her – or to her, telling her for the first time – that she was in an accident that obliterated her memory.  She is able to remember what happens throughout the day, but once her eyes shut at night, whatever she knows is gone.  Completely reliant on Ben, she can only trust that what he is telling her is true.  But then she gets a call from a man claiming to be her doctor, who tells her of a journal she is keeping, a journal in which she has written, in big, bold letters, “DON’T TRUST BEN.”

Uh-oh.

Christine sets herself to finding out the truth about her accident, a task made extraordinarily difficult by the fact that she must write everything down, and each morning, must re-read what she is written every single day before.  If the journal is lost, or Dr. Nash does not call to remind her of it, she has no idea that it or her quest exist.  Slowly, she begins to regain what she believes to be memory but what others tell her are only mistaken delusions.  Soon enough, she knows she can only rely on herself to determine what is real and what isn’t.

Watson’s story is very compelling and, despite the nature of Christine’s injury, not repetitive.  The story does become so convoluted at times that what’s happening in the journal, what isn’t, and what’s simply daydreams become hard to separate.  Also difficult to believe is that day in and day out, her husband and her doctor are willing to re-explain every detail to her.  When Christine reunites with an old friend, that friend is willing to spill a half-story and then let Christine wander off, alone and lost.  At home, Ben allows Christine to wake up every day, terrified and lost, in a very intimate situation with someone she does not know at all, which seems unnecessarily cruel.  He lines the bathroom mirror with pictures of their life together, but Christine finds them only after she has panicked and fled from him in terror.  In the end, it makes sense (and that’s all I can say about that), but until then, it’s a little frustrating and forced. 

Also forced are the journal sections of the story, which takes up quite a bit of the narrative.   In the journal, Christine recreates entire conversations, word for word, and hours of action, all while hiding from her husband in the bathroom before dinner and in the office at night.  For someone with a memory problem, that’s pretty impressive.  I have no such issues and can’t remember conversations 10 minutes after I’ve had them. 

Before I Go to Sleep is unsuccessful in that it varies wildly between Christine’s utter dependence (Ben must tell her the story every day) and complete independence (she goes for trips to hospitals and to see friends, and writes pages and pages in her journal, without him ever knowing).  Despite this, it is a compelling story, and one worth reading.  Some people will probably see the ending coming, but there are enough twists and turns to keep even a skeptic going.

LENGTH: 368 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: Very.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Yes, although it does require a bit of suspension of disbelief.