The Forgetting Time
By Sharon Guskin
Flatiron Books, 2016
357 pages
I love a literary page turner. A story with just enough mystery to keep me wondering, while also enjoying the rich language and more fully developed characters than is found in commercial fiction. One of my favorite debuts in this category is Celeste Ng’s, Everything I Never Told You. The Forgetting Time is a new favorite.
Janie Zimmerman is a single mom with a unique four-year-old. She got pregnant during a one-night stand while on vacation in Trinidad. She now balances her work as an architect with the energy needed to raise her son Noah. She loves Noah, feels connected to him, but there is a side to him she doesn’t understand. Noah has terrible nightmares and talks about things Janie knows he has never experienced, like reading Harry Potter books and another “mommy.” After the director of his preschool tells Janie that Noah is no longer welcome in the school, and also suggests he needs therapy, Janie sets off on a journey to discover what is different about her son. She connects with Jerome Anderson, an aging psychiatry professor, who is also an expert on past lives.
I don’t want to give away what happens, as Guskin weaves a beautiful story, but with Jerome, Janie begins to see her son, and the world, in a new way. This book has an intriguing otherworldly set up and a twisting plot that kept surprising me as the story unfolded.
The book explores the mother – son relationship and the idea of when do our lives begin –at birth or are we connected to a longer lifeline? It also explores the extent to which we are influenced by nature or nurture and what it means to have a child and to also lose one. The book read to me like a movie and I got so gripped that I finished it in two sittings. If you enjoy a family mystery and are open to the idea that life does not begin at birth, I think you will enjoy Guskin’s tale.
Guskin lives in Brooklyn was briefly was a member of my writers group. I feel lucky to have met her in person. Check out this lovely conversation she had with a fellow writer about getting her debut into the world.
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