London Lane is the stuff of Hollywood movies: her memory works in a way worthy of Memento. But where Guy Pearce’s Leonard Shelby can only remember the snatches of time held in his short-term memory, London, with one exception, remembers nothing that has happened–but rather everything that will happen. Every night at 4:33, London’s memory resets, in doing so wiping from her mind all that has happened the previous day.

Needless to say, London’s ability to function is severely impaired by her condition, and like Leonard she relies on an intricate system of note-taking. Each night before she goes to sleep, London meticulously notes down everything she will need to get through the following day based on that day’s memories and her future memories of the coming day: whether to bring her PE outfit, whether she’ll be quizzed in class, and so on. This system, combined with the support of her mother and her best friend Jamie, who, other than a psychologist who is apparently no longer on the scene, allows London to get by without more than the occasional mishap.

But remembering the future doesn’t necessarily mean that London has any agency over it, and when new memories assert themselves, she takes them as canon. Until she meets a boy who she cannot remember seeing in her future. London’s immediate reaction is to avoid him: if he’s not present in her future, then why suffer through the song and dance of building a relationship? But the boy, Lucas, is intent on wooing London, and soon enough London finds that she is cautiously pencilling him into her notes.

There’s more, however, to Lucas’s place in London’s future memories than might initially be conceived, and together the two of them set about unravelling the mystery surrounding London’s only memory of her past: the kidnapping of her brother Jonas.

High-concept novels are prized in the current young adult climate, and Forgotten fits the mould perfectly: it pairs a quasi-paranormal psychological element that Oliver Sacks would happily leap upon with the sort of unusual narrative of mega-hits such as The Time Traveller’s Wife. However, although I appreciated the quiet narrative approach of Forgotten, it’s hard to extricate it from the many similarly themed novels I’ve read of late (What Alice Forgot and The Story of Forgetting just to name a few, and the result for me was a novel that didn’t quite feel as fresh as I might have liked. And when the gimmick that gives the book its appeal is removed, there is in reality a very slight plot to work with. To be honest, this didn’t especially concern me until towards the end of the novel, where the book shifts pace and tone quite dramatically: we move managing London’s daily concerns and general teenage angst to her efforts to solve the mystery of her brother’s kidnapping–and the reveal is a little hard to believe.

Where the book’s strengths lie, then, are in its more mainstream elements. London’s close relationship with her mother is beautifully depicted, as is that with her friend Jamie. London remarks at one point in the book that she is astonished by the fact that Jamie is taking a gamble by maintaining a friendship with London given that Jamie cannot see whether London will betray her in future. But London herself is equally reliant on the past actions and good will of both her mother and Jamie: either could betray her by tampering with her notes or misleading her about the past (although who knows, perhaps London may see such a thing coming). London’s notes are a proxy for her memory–”reading is remembering”, she says–and the fact that she is willing to share these so openly with these two women is quite moving (and perhaps a little naive, as things turn out).

Another of the most striking elements of the novel is around the notion of agency and around wanting to know (or change) what might be conceived of as one’s fate. For London, the future seems to be fixed in the same sort of determinate way as the past is to everyone else. For this reason there’s a sense of the inexorable about her actions, and a sort of risk-free existence: knowing what is to come, she is able to prepare for it as required. But while London sees this as something to be desired, for Jamie it is confining and short-sighted. When London indicates to Jamie that Jamie’s affair with a teacher can only end badly, Jamie begs her friend to let her see for herself how things will turn out. She doesn’t want to know her future as it may reduce the options open to her now at this point of time.

Of course, London’s changing conception of agency and its role in her existence is key in the development of her relationship with Lucas, and of course in the final act of the book. While the character growth involved in this intrigues, it also results in things becoming all too easily solved, and the quiet sense of loss and confusion Patrick has worked to hard to evoke dwindles away as the novel reaches its conclusion.

Forgotten is an admirable, ambitious debut, and there’s much here to like. Patrick writes frankly and warmly, and there’s an honesty here that encourages instant rapport. The characters are beautifully drawn and superbly ambiguous, but like a time travel narrative the conceit of future memory had me picking out loopholes and inconsistencies, and I found myself assessing the book rather than reading it. The ending, too, feels somewhat pat and weak, dragging down an otherwise excellent read.

Rating: (very good)

With thanks to Hardie Grant Egmont for the review copy

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Your turn: what’s your take on books that involve amnesia or unusual types of recollection?