Sam Taylor is an academic writer with creative ambition. In
his American
debut, THE AMNESIAC, is the elusive story of a man who is
lost in life, due in
part to a loss of memory. After James Purdew, the main
character of the
novel, breaks his leg, looses his girlfriend, and can't land
a job, it seems that
nothing else could go wrong. As in fiction, things always
get worse. James
drifts around Amsterdam from pub to pub filled with time to
think, think, and,
then, think some more. The tedious nature of James as a
character is evident
from the first page. He's the sort of guy that is alienated
by nature of his
reclusive and critical gaze at the world, much like an
academic or a psycho-
path. James manages to land a job at a strangely familiar
house where he
finds the remnants of a 19th century murder manuscript.
Don't get too
excited that the plot fires up. It doesn't. This book is
like watching a Michael
Snow video at the Guggenheim. It's a great experience if
you're up for it. If
you're not, then you're going to want to escape immediately.
The influence of different literary genres are explored by
Taylor as he writes a
very long story in which nothing much seems to happen to his
central
character. That's trouble for a character-driven novel. I'll
admit the first fifty
pages of the novel were brilliant. I loved Taylor's style,
but by page two
hundred and fifty I felt like I was being punished by the
narration. I felt like I
was reading a Clockwork Orange and a Robbe-Grillet novel at
the same time.
Don't get me wrong. Sam Taylor is a fine writer that will
jolt you with
philosophical thoughts about the nature of memory, though
most of the
philosophy is coming from the cannon of western thought, not
his own. My
chief complaint is that the novel is emotional disconnecting
and that has
made me a candidate to forget it. This novel is great for
those who are up for
an academic spin on memory and patience.
Hailed as “one to watch ” by the UK’s Telegraph, Sam
Taylor is one of the most imaginative and innovative young
writers at work today. With The Amnesiac,
his United States debut, he incorporates a murder mystery and a
forgotten manuscript into an exhilarating and intelligent
novel. When
twenty-nine-year-old James Purdew returns to England from
his home in
Amsterdam, it is to discover what happened during three
earlier years
of his life that he cannot recall. What he finds, in an old
house with
a tragic history, is a nineteenth-century manuscript that
begins to
seem less and less like a work of fiction—and more like the
key to his
own lost past. Memory and amnesia, fiction and reality,
destiny and
randomness, heaven and hell—all converge to form an
engrossing gothic
story that is sure to appeal to fans of Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s
The Shadow of the Wind.
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