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BOOK REVIEW

BEFORE

I GO TO

SLEEP

BY S. J. WATSON

Reviewed By Fred Olin, MD

Christine Lucas is a woman in her 40s, but she doesn’t know
that. She’s married and lives with her husband in North Lon-
don, but she doesn’t know those facts either. When she awak-
ens each morning, she has no idea where she is or who that
man is who’s in bed with her. She wakes up thinking she’s in
her 20s, because that’s what her memories tell her. She’s
frightened by not recognizing anything she sees, but gets
up and goes into the bathroom, where the mirror horrifies
her. Her face has lines and wrinkles and sags that a 20+ year-old
woman doesn’t have…but, but it’s her face nonetheless. Pasted Dr. Nash had been
up around the mirror are pictures of her older self with a man, attempting to help her regain both her
and it’s the man in the bed. The pictures are labeled “Christine memory and her ability to retain new memories by having her write
and Ben.” The two of them appear to be affectionate and con- in a journal that she was to keep secret from Ben, because he had
nected to one another. She looks at her body: it’s not the way she refused Nash’s request to try and help her after he heard about her
remembers, either. from a colleague. Each morning after Ben had gone to work Dr.
After a bit, the man wakes up and the story commences. He calms Nash would telephone Christine, tell her where she had hidden the
her down and tells her that she had some trauma about 20 years journal, and ask her to find it and read it. Then he asked find time
ago, and that she’s 47 now. He says that she was struck by a hit-and- at the end of the day to write all that had happened and hide the
run driver and was comatose with a head injury for a long time. journal in the same spot.
When she finally regained consciousness she was found to have lost What follows is a quotation from a review of the book in the Los
the ability to form new memories that would persist through a pe- Angeles Times by Jonathan Shapiro: I tried to write this but couldn’t
riod of deep sleep, so each day is truly a new world for her. Early put the thoughts together half as well.
on she had a psychotic break and spent some time in a psych ward,
then more time in a nursing home before Ben brought her home “This is life beyond mere confusion or disorientation. Watson
to care for her himself. presents a character existing in a condition of perpetual now-
There are only four characters in this entrancing novel: Christine, ness, a present without context, a life without history. It is a
her husband Ben Wheeler, a neuropsychologist, Dr. Nash, and kind of hell — an intellectual and emotional state devoid of
Claire, her best friend from before her accident. She hasn’t had con- meaning or emotion. It is what we fear when we fear the noth-
tact with Claire for many years, and Ben tells her that Claire moved ingness produced by Alzheimer's, perhaps, or some other condi-
to New Zealand years ago. tion that robs one of mind and memory.”

28 San Antonio Medicine • March 2018