Reviews
Forgotten Girl: A powerful true story of amnesia, secrets and second chances by Naomi Jacobs
liralen's review
3.0
There's some irony in the idea of a memoir about amnesia, isn't there? But that's what this is.
Jacobs was either 15 or 32 when she woke up with amnesia, depending on how you look at it. The past 17 years of her life had been inexplicably wiped out, and while she could remember certain things (some phone numbers, for example, or her son's name), she could not quite be convinced that she was really 32 and that 'smeg' was no longer a cool word.
I previously (some time ago) read [b:I Forgot to Remember|18144048|I Forgot to Remember A Memoir of Amnesia|Su Meck|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391970000s/18144048.jpg|25539534], a woman who sustained a head injury that erased all her memories: not just who people were and what had happened, but how to read and write and feed herself. She never regained those memories, eventually focussing instead on rebuilding her life and figuring out how to make things work going forward. I think I thought this would be something along those lines. It's not: it's a very different context, for one (different type of amnesia with different results), and the book ends up being much much much more about relearning the traumas that had led Jacobs to lose her memory than it is about figuring out how to go forward. In some ways it reads like fiction, which can be a positive thing in fiction but in this case left me with some questions. It kind of boggles my mind, for example, that although Jacobs saw a doctor (who didn't believe a thing she said), nobody insisted she go to hospital. Instead her friends and sister just sort of...went with it? Without any idea what had caused it? If one of my loved ones started exhibiting the same symptoms, I'd worry about aneurysms, blood clots, strokes, injuries, and tumours. Definitely made me stumble in my reading.
If you're interested in amnesia memoirs, I'd recommend I Forgot to Remember over Forgotten Girl, but I'm curious now about what else is out there.
Jacobs was either 15 or 32 when she woke up with amnesia, depending on how you look at it. The past 17 years of her life had been inexplicably wiped out, and while she could remember certain things (some phone numbers, for example, or her son's name), she could not quite be convinced that she was really 32 and that 'smeg' was no longer a cool word.
I previously (some time ago) read [b:I Forgot to Remember|18144048|I Forgot to Remember A Memoir of Amnesia|Su Meck|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391970000s/18144048.jpg|25539534], a woman who sustained a head injury that erased all her memories: not just who people were and what had happened, but how to read and write and feed herself. She never regained those memories, eventually focussing instead on rebuilding her life and figuring out how to make things work going forward. I think I thought this would be something along those lines. It's not: it's a very different context, for one (different type of amnesia with different results), and the book ends up being much much much more about relearning the traumas that had led Jacobs to lose her memory than it is about figuring out how to go forward. In some ways it reads like fiction, which can be a positive thing in fiction but in this case left me with some questions. It kind of boggles my mind, for example, that although Jacobs saw a doctor (who didn't believe a thing she said), nobody insisted she go to hospital. Instead her friends and sister just sort of...went with it? Without any idea what had caused it? If one of my loved ones started exhibiting the same symptoms, I'd worry about aneurysms, blood clots, strokes, injuries, and tumours. Definitely made me stumble in my reading.
If you're interested in amnesia memoirs, I'd recommend I Forgot to Remember over Forgotten Girl, but I'm curious now about what else is out there.
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