Blog Tour ~ What Was Lost by Jean Levy

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be hosting today's stop on the 

What Was Lost Blog Tour

The Dome Press
13 September 2018

What's it all about...

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 did I think about it...

Our memories define us, they make us into the people we are and give us meaning and purpose. When those memories are taken away from us we flounder and cease to function as we did before. 

Sarah is recovering from a devastating accident which has left her without any conscious memory and as her amnesia takes over her life, so the struggle for some sort of stability becomes paramount. Guarded by a team of medical experts, Sarah tries to make sense of a world in which she is increasingly isolated, a world in which she can remember how to drive her car, but then struggles to make a cup of coffee. That is, until she meets a man who makes her question everything about her new life. 

This compelling psychological drama looks at what happens after a catastrophic trauma, at how the brain closes down to protect itself from memories it doesn't want to remember and which, as the story progresses, reveals more questions than it does answers. 

The author controls this complicated plot really well, offering tantalising glimpses into Sarah's previous life whilst at the same time keeping the unreliability of Sarah as the primary narrator. I found everything about Sarah's emerging life compelling, particularly in the way the medical profession seem to be manipulating her recovery, and whilst I was drawn to some of the people in the story from the start, there were others, and one health professional in particular, who made my blood boil. Even though some of the peripheral characters aren't always likeable, they add much needed light and shade to what is, after all, quite a dark story. I particularly enjoyed the medical aspects of Sarah's condition; her medical problems are well explained for those of us who know very little about the inner workings of the brain, or of its complexities when it goes wrong. 

Engrossing, compelling and fascinating until the very last sentence, What Was Lost is a clever debut by a talented writer whose love of language and creativity shines through with every well written word.

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.

Twitter @JeanELevy

@DomePress

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