St. Martin’s Press, July 12, 2016.
Three Stars
In an affluent small town in Connecticut, the
citizens feel safe and protected, far from the violent crimes of larger nearby
cities. That is, until a teenage girl named Jenny is sexually assaulted at a
high school party, in the woods behind one of the town’s wealthy homes. In the
hours after her rape, the decision is made to give her an experimental new drug
which will wipe out her memory of the attack. In the wake of the crime, the
whole town is shaken – but Jenny remains blissful unaware of the details of her
rape.
In the months after the attack, Jenny heals
physically, except for a small, mysterious scar on her back. However, she continues
to suffer from her emotional memories of the rape – she feels anger and pain,
but without the justification of concrete memories, she cannot work through her
emotions to heal. She begins to see psychologist Alan Forrester, who hopes to
resurface her memories through creative new therapies.
The novel is told from the perspective of Dr.
Forrester, and he explains the situation in a cold, detached way, because he is
clinically removed from the situation. However, as the plot unfolds, we learn
that he is much more involved in the aftermath of Jenny’s rape than he seems to
be. He uses smells and sounds in an effort to help Jenny remember, but it soon
becomes clear that he is manipulating the formation of her memories.
Jenny’s parents react in surprising ways to both her
rape and her choice to remember it – they each bring their own baggage to the
situation, and we hear about all of it through their sessions with Dr.
Forrester. The doctor also has another patient that has taken the same
experimental drug as Jenny – a war veteran named Sean who is using the drug to
treat his PTSD. In the author’s note, Walker claims that there are currently drugs
being tested for this application, but this novel sets out to prove that forgetting
is not the same as healing.
The descriptions of the drug and how it wipes
memories are interesting and believable, without being overdone – there is just
enough explanation to make it seem that this could happen in the near future.
Regardless, this is not science fiction – it is a literary discussion about the
value of memory, and whether it is ever appropriate or even necessary to suppress
it. This is a psychological novel, but not a thriller in my opinion. Although there
has been a crime committed, there is little urgency to solve it – the local
police seem happy enough to pin the rape on a man who happened to be passing through
the community, preserving the illusion that their town is inviolate. The story
shows the cracks in suburban family life, and how precariously it is held
together.
The point of view is consistent, although I didn’t
like Alan’s voice at first, especially when I couldn’t figure out who he was or
who he is speaking to. He knows more than he’s willing to admit, and he makes
us as readers into accomplices in his agenda. His tone is clinical, as if he is
simply dictating notes from his sessions with clients. It is an unusual
narrative choice, and it could lose readers, but I did get caught up in it
eventually.
The film rights to this novel have already been
purchased by Reese Witherspoon, so I’m sure it will be extremely popular and
successful. I don’t see how the tone will translate into film, but it is the
concept of a memory-erasing drug that makes this so interesting anyway, and in
fact it may work better on screen than written solely in the voice of the cold
and calculating Dr. Forrester.
I received this novel from St. Martin’s Press and
NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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