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Part chilling ghost story, part absorbing mystery , “Small Forgotten Moments” resonates with a spine-chilling eeriness that is reminiscent of Gothic classics such as “Jane Eyre” or “Wuthering Heights”.
Jo Mckye, our narrator, is an artist, living with a terrifying problem – she has no memory of anything that has happened to her beyond the last three years.
The impact of this amnesia on her life is crushing – Jo has no memory of her childhood, her loves, her friends, and with all of her formative experiences cruelly cut from her conscious thoughts , Jo’s identity is tentative, gaping, and deeply fragmented.
“I exist with chunks of myself veiled in fog, a vague blur in my peripheral vision, a ghost. “
“Each of my days is brand new. I’m trapped in an interminable present and I don’t always feel part of the world, – I don’t understand it.”
Living in a state of almost complete social isolation, including a devastating estrangement from her parents, Joy’s only escape from her psychological ordeal is her painting.
“I tell people it doesn’t bother me, not knowing where I came from – and for the most part, it doesn’t. But today I want a hug from my mum.”
As Jo struggles to make sense of her amnesia, which has been diagnosed but appears resistant to successful treatment, her efforts to pick up the pieces of her shattered identity are interrupted , as, with dawning horror, she begins to realize a strange and unsettling unconscious obsession has taken over her painting. Each new piece of her art, starting with portraits but lately even extending to abstractions, through no conscious will of her own, has ended up a creative but essentially recurring rendition of the same now recognizable face, – a woman she does not remember meeting yet somehow intrinsically knows to call “Zenna”.
As Jo descends further into her own personal psychological abyss, reality and illusion become hard for her to distinguish – her world cascading into a chaotic mix of sinister encounters with “Zenna”; confusing dreams, memory snippets and hallucinations; and the dawning realization that she will need to take drastic steps if she is ever to succeed in putting her splintered life together.
“I’m losing track of the days, they slither so easily into each other “
Atmospheric, dark, and incredibly compelling, the author has several clever twists up her sleeve as the plot unfolds, including a dramatic and satisfying ending. – No spoilers here, you will need to read the book to find out more!
A great big thanks to the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book All thoughts presented are my own.
My stop today on the @zooloosbooktours #blogtour for #SmallForgottenMoments by @AnnalisaCrawf published by #VineLeavesPress
