#Domevember #BookshelfSpotlight ‘What Was Lost’ by Jean Levy

About the book…

Sarah has no memories. She just knows she was found, near death, on a beach miles from her London home. Now she is part of a medical experiment to see whether her past can be retrieved.

But bad things seemed to have happened before she disappeared. The police are interested in her hidden memories too. A nice man she meets in the supermarket appears to have her best interests at heart. He seems to understand her – almost as if he knows her…

As she fights to regain her memories and her sense of self, it is clear that people are hiding things from her. Who are they protecting? Does Sarah really want the truth?

‘What Was Lost’ is available in audiobook, ebook and paperback-by clicking on the link, you can read an extract of it too!

I genuinely struggled with writing the review to this book-there seem to be an inadequate amount of words which I have at my disposal to describe how it made me feel.

Brutal, unflinching and going to some extremely dark places, this touches on the nature of memories, who they belong to and the neurological effects of amnesia.

Sarah Blake is a children’s book writer-we, the readers, do not know this at the start. What we experience, through Sarah’s first person narrative, is that she is completely dependant on, and thereby made helpless by, Mrs Parkin – a woman who visits her in her flat-and 3 doctors who she is taken to see 3 times a week. beyond this, she has no tv, no phone, no way of contacting anyone else . Which is ok as she is unable to remember anything that happened after her 9th birthday.

The ‘episodes’ which are Sarah’s narrative, are interspersed with portions of the book remembering her past, and the doctor’s meetings where Sarah is not present. This makes you feel like you actually know more about her than she presently does. Something terrible happened, something so bad that Sarah not only has a type of retrograde amnesia, she also cannot make memories about herself in the now.

She writes notes and letters to herself,keeps to the rules unknowing exactly why she has to. Everyone around her maintains that she needs to remember in her own time, what happened when she disappeared for 2 days. Found, unconscious on a beach in Devon, Sarah remains unreachable for a furtehr 6 weeks, then spends 3 months in Greystone Clinic before being allowed to return to her flat-if indeed it is her flat. Things she knows should be there are kept in storage, again for her own good.

When a chance meeting at a convenience store results in a tentative relationship developing with a man named Matthew, things become very dark indeed. Struggling to rise up to the surface, Sarah begins acting completely out of ‘character’ (or is she?)and begins to challenge what is happening to her.

Lots of things made me feel uncomfortable about how she is being manipulated to come to a truth that the police, her doctors and family are waiting for. The undercover posting of a detective at her assessment clinics, the removal of choice from Sarah’s life over who she can see and when, are all measured with pathos as she sits in her living room, looking at a bookcase of novels that another her wrote. The sense of loss is totally palpable.

The way that the tension and suspense is sustained throughout ‘What Was Lost’ is wonderful. As a reader, you are invested in the recovery of Sarah’s memories, at the same time, you feel as if you are her confidante and your need to know supercedes whether or not it is safe for her to know the unknowable. The fourth wall breaking discussion between her medical team referencing ‘retrograde amnesia as a convenient plot device‘ made me smile, as did the tentative establishing of Sarah’s relationship with Matthew. The insights into the books that Sarah wrote, based on her memories-oh the sad irony!-of her time with her grqandmother add another dimension to the story. Sarah’s books were known as the books of the LOST, set in a place named Raggedy Lyme where missing things went-and you only got them back if deserved to have them return to you.

By turns a thrilling and emotion driven novel, as well as suspenseful tale of mystery, ‘What Was Lost’ is an incredible read. It made me ponder long and hard what would have happened if Agatha Christie had been subjected to similar memory recovery techniques after her infamous disappearing act-maybe there are some things we are just better off not knowing, or are really, ultimately, no one’s business.

Highly, highly recommended!

About the author…

Jean spent several years in genetics research before abandoning the laboratory to pursue a career in academic publishing both in Holland the UK. She has been a database trouble-shooter, an editor, and a writer for publishing houses, pharmaceutical companies and the EU. She has degrees in Botany, Pathology, Philosophy, English, Law and Creative Writing and is currently completing a doctorate in Linguistics.
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In her spare time she has campaigned for the environment and read a lot of books, the most memorable being Alice in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, everything by Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson, and a few things by Sebastian Faulks, Calvino, Ian McEwan, David Mitchell and Shakespeare.

She currently lives in a converted barn in the South Downs with her husband and a Heritage Plant Collection, accumulates Christmas tree decorations and aspires to writing multi-genre fiction, travelling on the Orient Express and seeing the Northern Lights.

Twitter @JeanELevy @DomePress