A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Watson’s pitch-perfect writing propels the story to a frenzied climax that will haunt readers long after they’ve closed the cover on this remarkable book.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. The angst is unimaginable but palpable in this suspenseful story of a woman who can take nothing for granted. Watson writes in the first person, from the perspective of a woman, and the voice is surprisingly spot-on.

It is through this journal that she begins to pick up the pieces of her life and who she was before she was injured. Nash, and he encourages her to keep a journal.

But Christine is seeing a doctor behind Ben’s back. Ben anticipates her questions, though, and has placed photos of himself and Christine around the bathroom mirror so that when she awakens in a panic, with a body and face that she cannot recognize, she will find the photos and begin once again to adjust to a world where she remembers nothing. When she awakens, she cannot recall her life or the people in it. Now she suffers from a type of amnesia that once she sleeps for the night wipes the slate from the previous day clean. Christine, he says, was struck by an automobile and injured. The man, who patiently explains that he is her husband, Ben, tells her how she has come to this terrible place. Most disturbing, though, is the older man she does not recognize beside her in bed. She remembers being a lithe 20-something, but awakens day after day in the body of a woman who is nearly 50, with sagging breasts and wrinkles. Christine remembers nothing of the day before and not much of the life she lived prior to these mornings.

Based upon a deceptively simple premise, Watson’s debut novel unwinds as a story that is both complicated and compellingly hypnotic.Įvery single morning of Christine’s life is exactly the same as every other morning: She awakens next to a total stranger in a room she does not recognize, surrounded by objects she has never before seen.

Sj watson before i go to sleep