Blind Date

I just had a blind date with a book.

Plucked at random from my stack of unread advanced readers copies, I opened The Forgetting Time, by Sharon Guskin knowing very little, apart from this pre-publication blurb:

What happens to us after we die? What happens before we are born? At once a riveting mystery and a testament to the profound connection between a child and parent, The Forgetting Time will lead you to reevaluate everything you believe…

The plot centers around the theory that some people have lived previous lives which they remember as small children but start to forget as they get older.

Four-year-old Noah has fear of water and refuses to take a bath or even wash his hands, he also suffers from nightmares and constantly asks his mom to take him ‘home’ and to see his ‘other mom’.

“Not now Noah? I see. It happened in another time.”   

                       “Yes, when I was big.”

Janie, Noah’s mom, is shaken and confounded by her son’s behavior. This is his home and she is his mom.  Noah knows about things he has never been exposed to – the Harry Potter books, lizards, and how to score a baseball game. Is Noah the reincarnation of another boy who died?  Janie is skeptical but enlists the help of a Dr. Anderson, who has researched and documented this phenomenon.   Together they begin a journey that rattles not only their beliefs about Noah’s situation, but also their own lives. 

Really Book Barmy? Reincarnation? No, not for me, you’re thinking.  I thought the very same thing, but I must tell you, by the end of the second chapter, I was immediately smitten with The Forgetting Time. 

This book has multiple layers.  It’s a thought-provoking look into reincarnation. But it’s also a murder mystery. There is much about hurt, fear, aging, and death.  But mostly, The Forgetting Time is about the connections humans have with each other. It shouldn’t all work together — but it does – and does so very well.

With her beautiful prose, Ms. Guskin chases away any doubts about reincarnation, and creates a world where we believe in the real possibility that there is life beyond the one, singular one we all have before us.

“You only live once. But was it true? That was the problem, wasn’t it? She had never thought about it in any deep way. She hadn’t had the time or inclination to speculate about other lives: this one was hard enough to manage.”

Interspersed throughout the book are fascinating case studies of other children with inexplicable memories of previous lives.  And so the author steadily draws the reader into reality of what is happening to Noah and the possibility of a life reborn.

There is much to think about when reading this novel, lives well (or not so well) lived, death, loss, hope — and the constantly changing human experience.

“…[Dr. Anderson] thought of Heraclitus: a man cannot step in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.”

When evaluating this blind date, I have never read anything quite like The Forgetting Time – I found it both thought provoking and unforgettable.  And while I still don’t know how much I believe in reincarnation — this book left me wanting to believe.

An advanced readers copy was provided by Flatiron Books

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