What Was Lost by Jean Levy

What Was Lost
By Jean Levy
Published by The Dome Press (13 September 2018)
I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher

Publisher's description

How would you live if you had no memories? And what if you were suspected of a terrible crime?

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?

My verdict
What Was Lost is a beautifully written psychological thriller covering themes of memory, identity and discovery.

The book is based on a frightening concept - losing your adult memories, so that all that remain are those of your childhood. This is what's happened to Sarah, after she was found, alone and badly injured, on a beach far away from home. She can't remember her friends, family, loved ones or colleagues. She's in a child-like state - physically an adult, but emotionally that of a young girl. She's learning how to live again, doing simple tasks and taking on responsibilities, questioning everything around her, including herself. At the same time, her doctors are hiding the facts about her life, trying to find out whether her memories will return on their own. And more importantly, trying to establish whether her memory loss is real or not.

Most of the story is told through Sarah's point of view, so the reader is relying on her experience of current events. I wasn't sure how easily she could be trusted from the start - you can't get a more unreliable narrator than someone with no memories. But then as she began to question everything around her, I wondered if maybe no one else could be trusted either. The author clearly knows her science as this is present in abundance, as Sarah's doctors and counsellors cushion, control and experiment to learn more about memories and the impact of amnesia. And then there are the police, lurking in the background, desperate to know the truth about what happened to Sarah and some recent tragic events.

What Was Lost is a slow burner, and I admit that it took me a little while to get into the story. But I soon found myself savouring the wonderful prose and stunning vivid descriptions, down to the finer detail of Sarah's life. I loved the London setting and little insights into the publishing industry.

There's plenty of mystery and intrigue, as gradually snippets of Sarah's past are tossed into the arena, like little sparks lighting up her fog-filled mind. I can't say much about the other people in the book as they are all carefully, cleverly and gradually revealed one by one, like shadowy figures on the side of a stage awaiting their cue. The reader is as much in the dark as Sarah, relying on these characters to fill in some of the memory gaps.

What Was Lost is a compelling literary read - an in-depth multilayered psychological thriller based on science that's designed to question, explore and entertain.