Detailed plot synopsis reviews of Before I Go To Sleep |
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Ben, the real Ben, shows up, as does Adam, her son, who it turns out wasn't killed by muslims.
Ben, the real Ben, says he divorced Christine because he thought divorcing her would help her, heh heh heh. He gave the same lame excuse that Mike did when he pretended to be Ben! But Ben said that Christine was such a retard that she wouldn't even know that he had divorced her. Really, though, Ben wanted to be free to have sex with other women. He told Christine that he boned a bunch of women and enjoyed it, but it wasn't the same as banging Christine, which he now misses, now that she isn't crazy anymore. How convenient is that?
Christine realizes that she is starting to remember more things, that her amnesia is going away. Now that she's no longer a retard, Ben announces he wants to start banging her again. It's all one big happy ending except--what happened to Mike? I read and then reread the ending, but can't find any mention of him. Major character missing, right? What a well written book!
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Literary Criticism:
There were good things about this book.
1) The premise was fascinating. Not only a woman with amnesia, but a woman with amnesia who forgot each day's events the following day. That alone makes for an interesting storyline!
2) The ending was unpredictable. Clearly, to me, Ben was the bad guy and I knew that early on. What I didn't figure out until almost the end was that Ben was not really Ben. That was a tremendous surprise. It's rare for a book, any book, to have a surprise ending.
Now, the not so good parts of the book.
Most of the plot consisted of Christine finding out something Ben lied about, and then wondering whether he was being kind or evil by lying about it. She found out he lied about her being an author, about their son, about her accident, and so on and so on. Each time she had the same dilemma, figuring out if Ben was good or bad. It grew tiresome and repetitive after a while.
The most interesting parts of the story was when she confronted Ben about his lies. But most of the story consisted of her fact finding missions to find out her real past. These fact finding missions, which took up most of the book, were not very interesting.
The story could have been more interesting if there were more drama between characters and somewhat less fact finding.
Maybe set up three different people who Christine has to figure out, call them A,B, and C. Each chapter she finds out something good or bad about A,B, or C which leads her to trust or not trust one of them. Show us more of Christine's interaction with A, B, and C when she confronts them about their lies and tries to figure out if they are telling the truth, and less about Christine's fact finding missions. The former is dramatic; the latter, less so. Then end the book showing which of A, B, or C Christine can actually trust, and which she can't. Have her figure out which of the three was her real assailant. Maybe have all three pretend that they are her husband! Now that would have made for a more dramatic story.
The other problem with the story were that parts were unrealistic. She kept a diary every day but Ben never discovered it until she told him about it? Not very credible.
Dr. Nash pursued her as a patient a little too much. Real doctors don't pursue patients. And how did he get paid for all those sessions? Apparently, he didn't. His zeal to pursue Christine didn't feel real.
And lastly, we never find out what happened to Mike in the end. Did he simply walk away from the hotel room? Christine, tied up in a room on fire, seemed to get rescued awfully conveniently as well. The ending seemed contrived and not well explained.
But overall, it was a reasonably good book. Of course, the bar is set pretty low, given how poorly written most books are.
