What Was Lost by Jean Levy

About the Author
Jean Levy has worked in genetics research, the pharmaceutical industry and in academic publishing. She is currently completing a doctorate in Linguistics. She studied Creative Writing at the University of Sussex and lives with her husband in the South Downs. This is her first novel.

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About the book
Something terrible has happened to successful children's writer Sarah, but she doesn't know what it is. All she knows is that it was enough to wipe her mind of memories.
Without her past she is lost, drifting, friendless, her life reduced to the protected one of a child. Specialists tell her that she must retrieve her memory of what brought her to be found, unconscious, bloodied and frozen, on a beach miles from her London home. And the police are interested too. But perhaps some things are best left forgotten...

Review
Sarah was found on a beach, miles away from her home, with no memory of how she ended up there. Since then she has been under a stringent set of rules to aid her recovery. She is more or less under constant surveillance by her doctors and needs daily help to remember the smallest things.

When she remembers fractured memories she isn't sure whether or not it's real or imagined scenarios. Even the simplest action has become a series of questions and fills her with doubt. From picking cereal in a supermarket to making a hot drink, every action seems to be a complex process and a mystery Sarah doesn't have the answers to.

Every person she meets is a stranger, every street she has walked before has become a path into the unknown. Her world is a bubble with little or no content on the inside and everything else, including her memories, is on the outside looking in.

The methods the specialists use are debatable. Keeping Sarah completely isolated and treating her like a child with no power seems counter-productive to the healing process. It is also incredibly intrusive to forbid contact with prior friends, remove any physical object which could evoke a memory and have adult babysitters checking up on you nearly every day.

Levy creates a tense steady paced thriller from a blank slate. Her main character can't fill in any of the details, the secondary characters either refuse to or aren't allowed to, which means the reader assumes the majority as the tale unfolds. It's a bit like sailing into the sunset without a paddle, sail or motor, and it's also what gives this story the edge.

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Publisher: Dome Press