Can you imagine losing your memory and not really wanting it back? This book could be alternatively titled How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Void. ( )

Surprised me. Enjoyed this more than I was expecting, I think. ( )

Who would you be if you were unable to remember anything from the last 24 years? Sampson is found wandering in the Nevada desert with absolutely no recollection of his teen or adult years, including his relationship to his wife, whom he apparently loved very much. With his blank slate of a mind, he is recruited to be part of a cutting edge research project, but the understanding he hoped for remained elusive. His attempts to reinvent himself take him on a cross-country journey of discovery. ( )

Not quite history but a nice story about a man who has lost his memory. I am into these kinds of books and I wouldn't say this is the best of the genre but I did enjoy it thoroughly. ( )

Wow. Read this book. I’m not going to be able to explain it properly, but it was compelling and deep. The protagonist loses 24 years of memory, which drives a wedge between him and his wife (no – more like a chasm, because there’s nothing there) who he no longer knows. His memories end at age 12, but he is able to make new ones. He volunteers for a charismatic doctor’s project to copy and paste memories from one brain to another which has, as they would put it on a dust jacket, “disastrous consequences.” This is a phrase that normally turns me off cold and makes me put a book back on the shelf, but I’m glad I checked this one out anyway because the consequences and their fallout (all of which are emotional) are written so deftly I hated the author a little bit. (Always a sure sign of good writing when I curse the author.) A quote, if I may: “And what is a life, Samson wondered now, without a witness?” Ugh – so many implications for writing, for reading, for memory, for relationships. ( )