Review: SECOND LIFE, S.J. Watson

• this edition published by Text Publishing in 2015
• ISBN  9-781922-079251
• 425 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Text Publishing)

How well can you really know another person? And how far would you go to find out the truth about them?

When Julia learns that her sister has been violently killed, she knows she must get to the bottom of things.

Even if it means jeopardising her relationship with her husband and risking the safety of her son. Getting involved with a stranger online. Losing control.

Perhaps losing everything.
Set in Paris and London, Second Life is about the double lives people lead—and the dark places they can end up in. Tense and unrelenting, it is another brilliant novel from S. J. Watson.

My Take

First of all, I have a confession to make. I had formed the impression that S.J. Watson was a female writer. But no, definitely a male.  Now that shouldn't make a difference should it, but in both his first novel BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP, and in SECOND LIFE, the primary narrator is female.

I thought one of the aspects of the story that was handled very well was the concept of the fine line that divides the real world and the online world. Not so long ago we were amazed at the concept of text conversation through email. But then the technology changed and we were able to enter online "rooms" where other voices spoke to us. As happens in SECOND LIFE, there is really no way of knowing whether these other voices are truthful in what they tell us, and even when we have underlying doubts, we tend to believe in the persona they create. Conversations with these online characters can be stimulating, even erotic, crossing boundaries which we wouldn't cross in "real life" situations. There is sometimes the feeling that you've discovered a soul-mate, a person who understands you in a way that no-one in your real world does, but of course you are seeing only part of their character and personality, the bit they want you to see, and you know almost nothing of their history.

The world that Julia discovers her sister has been part of is a 2D text based world, although not the 3D world also called Second Life in which avatars make the online world seem even more real. There have been other authors who have played around with the idea of Second Life, and explored online world in which even murders can happen, such as VIRTUALLY DEAD by Peter May, and WICKER by Kevin Guilfoile.

However in this novel Julia and her sister Katie both set up relationships in text rooms in an online world and then arrange to meet their new acquaintance in the "real" world. No one quite matches the persona they have created. The primary motivation for the meeting is sexual although Julia tells herself it is her search for her sister's killer.

The resultant story is one full of tension in which Julia crosses borders she wouldn't normally and the man she is meeting gives confusing signals. In reality she knows almost nothing about him.

So is this crime fiction you ask? Well yes, it is. The underpinning plot is Katie's murder, and then there are a heap of little secrets that Julia has hidden for well over a decade. But has Julia got in too far over her head, and will there be another murder?

My rating: 4.4

I've also reviewed 4.4, BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP

About the author
S. J. Watson’s debut novel, Before I Go To Sleep, has sold over four million copies and has been published in over 40 languages around the world. It has won several awards, including the UK’s Crime Novel of the Year (2011) and the Prix du Polar Prize for Best Crime Novel in France.

Review: BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP, S.J. Watson

• published: HarperCollins Publishers 2011
• ISBN 978-0-06-206055-5
• 358 pages
• Source: my local library

Plot synopsis (author's website)

Christine wakes up every morning in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar man. She looks in the mirror and sees an unfamiliar, middle- aged face. And every morning, the man she has woken up with must explain that he is Ben, he is her husband, she is forty-seven years old, and a terrible accident two decades earlier decimated her ability to form new memories.

But it’s the phone call from a Dr. Nash, a neurologist who claims to be working with Christine without her husband’s knowledge, that directs her to her journal, hidden in the back of her closet. For the past few weeks, Christine has been recording her daily activities—tearful mornings with Ben, sessions with Dr. Nash, flashes of scenes from her former life—and rereading past entries, relearning the facts of her life as retold by the husband she is completely dependent upon. As the entries build up, Christine asks many questions. What was life like before the accident? Why did she and Ben never have a child? What has happened to Christine’s best friend? And what exactly was the horrific accident that caused such a profound loss of memory?

Every day, Christine must begin again the reconstruction of her past. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more unbelievable it seems.

My take

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP is an ambitious debut novel: a story told from the point of view of an amnesiac whose memory, both short term and most of her long term, disappears overnight and dumps her back into life each morning over two decades earlier. Even then her memory of life until then is patchy and imperfect.

You get the general gist of the novel from the synopsis (above). There is a mystery on several fronts: why over twenty years have elapsed since the "accident" happened that left Christine like this; whether the two main people in her life, her husband and the neurologist, are actually telling her the truth; whether the fact that Christine was a writer had anything to do with her accident.

Christine, at the prompting of her neurologist, resorts to a ploy that Mike Befeler's elderly protagonist Paul Jacobsen also uses in the geezer lit cozy  RETIREMENT HOMES ARE MURDER (published 2007), keeping a journal on a daily basis. The journal becomes his memory. In Christine's case she records what she is told as well as what happens to her. So this "memory" is imperfect as well.

There was enough in BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP to keep me going, sufficient curiosity about what had happened to Christine, whether she would have a miraculous recovery that would put everything in its place. I think Watson probably took the theme as far as he could. There was the impression that the author was exploring some laneways to see where they led, only to back out of them when they became unproductive. As Christine pieces together her story via her journal, so too the reader, on another level, puts together the timeline of what has happened to Christine in the last twenty-plus years. Therein lies the mystery element. There are a number of story elements that remain unexplained and of course the reader at times knows quite a bit more than Christine does even though she diligently reads through her ever expanding journal when reminded to.

My rating 4.4

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP won the 2011 CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and the Galaxy Book Award for 2011 Crime & Thriller Novel of the Year as well as coming to the attention of Richard & Judy.

Other reviews and sites to visit

• SJ Watson's website
• Petrona
• Reactions to Reading
• from the author: the inspiration behind BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP (pdf)