Krauss's novel moves gracefully from exploration of a lost soul to science fiction to a meditation on memory. If the book unravels a bit at the end, it's only because Krauss is trying to do too much-certainly no literary sin. -Claire Dederer

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Bizarre book about how a man loses his memory and the effect it has on his life and his poor wife.

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Samson, a popular college professor, loses all memories after the age of twelve because of a benign brain tumor. This story revolves around how he and his wife cope with this loss. It explores how important memories are in shaping our life and making us who we are. It made me think about how amnesia, although usually portrayed in most fiction as an intriguing condition, would indeed be a rough road to take.

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five-adjective review:

austere, remote, detached, apart, thought-provoking

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Pretty interesting account of losing your past. I much prefer her next book, History of Love.

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This book was on someone's recommended reading list so I added it to my paperbackswap.com wish list and recently got the book. It's a slim book (248 pages). The writing is OK. The prologue is about a 1957 bomb test in the SW US desert. The book begins in 2000 when a 30+ man was found wandering in the Las Vegas area. He has no memory of the last 23 years of his life but his identity is learned and he returns to the eastern US and his wife. The reader then follows his life from that point. I kept waiting to see how this tied into the prologue.

When I'm reading a book--especially as I near the end--I have a pretty good idea of how I would rate the book. With this one, however, I was somewhat befuddled. I definitely didn't think it warranted 4 or 5 stars. The story started out promising but about midway through (after the experiment in the desert when we learn the connection to the prologue), things seemed to fall apart. POSSIBLE SPOILERS: Many of Samson's actions seemed completely ridiculous--running after a bus because a young woman inside reminded him of a younger version of his wife; his stealing of his brain tissue slides from the hospital; his long taxi ride to visit his great-uncle in a senior living facility and his then surreptiously leaving with his great-uncle; then traveling with great-uncle to Samson's childhood home to trespass in the middle of the night. END OF SPOILERS

I didn't find Samson to be a particularly sympathetic character. The ending was also unsatisfying.

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Interesting premise; a man loses all except his childhood memories due to a brain tumor. What decisions does he then make. Does he embrace the freedom or try to reconnect with his past? Sadly, I didn't like this book. I never connected with its characters and found the writing dispassionate, which saddens me because I loved "The History of Love".

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