Close to Me

“a marvelous psychological drama . . . as good as it gets.”

An intricately plotted debut novel that delivers sustained suspense combined with psychological drama, Close to Me by Amanda Reynolds should be at the top of everyone’s reading list.

Jo Harding knows she is lying on the flagstones of her hallway. “There’s no part of me I can move except for my left hand, and yet I feel I’m floating free.”

She hears her husband Rob asking if she’s all right. He tells her she lost her footing and fell down the stairs. Jo is only semi-conscious and doesn’t answer, as she tries to remember the sequence of events. “I was on the landing, I know that much, and Rob was behind me, too close, his long strides outpacing me.”

Beyond that, Jo remembers nothing; in fact, when she awakes in the hospital she has lost the entire year before her fall. She believes that she and Rob have just taken their son, Fin, to the university for the beginning of his freshman year.

In fact, Jo is remembering an event that happened the year before. The doctor explains that loss of memory is not uncommon with serious head trauma, such extensive loss is unusual. Other than a severe headache, a strained wrist, and some bad bruising—and the memory loss, of course—Jo has survived her fall with no serious injury.

“It may feel like Fin left for uni9oversity only yesterday, but somewhere deep within know that, between that moment in Fin’s empty bedroom and my fall down the stairs, there’s a huge hole, an immense gap in my understanding.”

The doctor releases her, telling Rob that he must not leave her alone for 24 to 48 hours. Those hours are an endless stretch of unease for Jo. She can’t find her phone, but doesn’t remember Rob telling her that it shattered when she fell, and that he threw away the pieces.

Her daughter, Sash, comes to see her, and Jo is shocked by the girl’s hair and make-up. Sash’s waist-length blond hair is chopped off to chin length, and her eyes are ringed in black liner. “I keep looking at her, hoping I’ll get used to the new Sash, but silently mourning the version I remember: girlish and softer.

Jo’s son, Fin, is there, too. “. . . his appearance is relatively unchanged, although he’s lost weight and he wears the last year heavily . . .”

She guesses he’s no longer attending the university, and Fin immediately turns to Rob. “I didn’t tell her, Dad. Honestly.”

Jo doesn’t understand and feels that her family is keeping secrets from her, but no one answers her questions. Finally Sash speaks up. “Ask Dad . . . He’s the one pulling the strings, telling us what we can and can’t say.”

So many changes happened that Jo can’t remember: Fin moving in with a friend named Ryan; Sash living with Thomas, who manages a run-down bar; a rift between Fin and his father.

Then there is Jo’s discomfort around Rob. When Rob slips into bed beside her the first night at home “I turn away from him, protecting my wrist perhaps, although it’s more a feeling that I can’t stand to have him anywhere near me.”

Chapters alternate between the time before the fall, and the days after. Ms. Reynolds skillful use of flashbacks to narrate events from the missing year and contrasting them with Jo’s flashes of returning memory keep the reader as uncertain and curious about what really happened as is Jo herself.

Jo’s recall is unreliable, adding to the suspense. When she remembers an encounter with the director of the drop-in center where she volunteers, she is uncertain whether or not she encouraged his sexual advances. Nor can she remember her actions with Thomas. She remembers his naked back and his inviting her into bed, but not what she did.

She has always been a faithful wife, a good mother. What kind of person is she really? Did she have an affair, and that is why Rob doesn’t want her to remember her missing year? “I remember you and me at the top of the stairs. You were angry, weren’t you? Really angry. And you were shouting at me and I’m trying to remember what I was doing . . .”

Her friend, Rose, at the drop-in center, keeps telling her about parts of her missing year, but Jo believes Rose misunderstands. What Rose tells her is impossible.

Also, there is Fin’s rant when she goes to see him after the fall. “You know, Mum, whatever happens you always just keep on going, don’t you? Keeping it together, pretending everything’s fine.”

Jo doesn’t understand what Fin is saying. What is she ignoring? What is happening to her life? Or more to the point, what happened to her life during the year she can’t remember?

Then she remembers following Rob when he leaves work, and the house with the bright red door. Finally she remembers the fall.

While amnesia is a rather time worn plot devise, Reynolds has made it totally credible without stretching medical facts about brain trauma and resulting memory loss. In fact, Reynolds’ description of the piecemeal recovery of Jo’s memory is textbook without the jargon.

All in all, Close to Me is a marvelous psychological drama on many levels: a parent coping with empty nest syndrome; a search for self-worth; the changing relationships between parents and grown children, and between husbands and wives.

For fans of suspense, especially suspense with a feminine perspective, Close to Me is as good as it gets.