Very grim. ( )

Strange and depressing book. Westlake can really write but this one was sad. ( )

Memory just drags. I was constantly trying to figure out what the mystery was. After finding out what the mystery was and that it's solution (which is horrendously boring in comparison to the one that I had in mind) I felt cheated by the book. I'd suffered through it hoping to get an interesting ending as a reward and in the end I didn't get one.

All in all, it's the story of a guy trying to get back the memory and personality of a person who I didn't feel any real connection with. And I didn't really feel connected to the guy he had become. Perhaps an tale of growing up...

Perhaps a re-reading would serve it better justice. ( )

Even though it was Westlake's last novel, its feel is pulpish as if it were written many years ago. It is not actionpacked as many other Hard Case Crime books are and there is very little crime in here. But, perhaps that was intentional. It is a different kind of Westlake novel and showcases some of his talent.

In a nutshell, the narrator (Paul Cole) is an actor who spends the night, while on tour with his acting company, in bed with a married woman. He explains: "he had chosen her because, being on the road with him, she was handy; and additionally being married. She had already clipped the wings of one male and therefore could demand nothing more from him than he was willing to give."

The husband walks in on them and bam the narrator ends up in the hospital and his memory is not good. He doesn't know who to call or how to get home, except that his home is on Grove Street in New
York. He takes a bus as far as his money will take him and ends up in a small town with not much in it. He ends up making a life there, but knows that he was supposed to go to New York and hopes he will remember when he gets there.

What is interesting about this book is how step by step, it is hard to go through life without remembering anything and how people will misunderstand you and turn away from you if you don't make sense to them. It is an interesting book and a well-told story. I really enjoyed it ( )

I'm a big fan of Donald Westlake under his own name and under his pen names. I've been reading his works for years and enjoyed everything of his that I ever read....up to this book,"Memory". If it wasn't good writing I wouldn't have made it as far as I did, but about halfway through the book, I just started skimming. I know this is suppose to be a piece of literature, but what it needed was an editor. A shorter book with the same subject (short and long term memory loss) would have been great, but 366 pages of going over and over and over how the main character was feeling, just didn't do it for me. ( )