This guy, who was an actor from NYC, wakes up in a Midwestern hospital after receiving a concussion. His memory leaks from his brain like water from a sieve. Maybe he becomes a different person, but he'll never really know. He tries to get back to his home which he doesn't understand probably will never be his home again, all the while losing and gaining memories.

This book devastated me. I've seen so many people with traumatic brain injuries since I started working at the library and the behaviors and mental processes discussed in this book line up 100% with what happens to folks.

Westlake's economy of language and characterization really was a cut above. I never want to read this book again because of how much of a massive bummer it was but there's no denying the degree of craft and depth of feeling it contained. ( )

Very grim. ( )

Strange and depressing book. Westlake can really write but this one was sad. ( )

Memory just drags. I was constantly trying to figure out what the mystery was. After finding out what the mystery was and that it's solution (which is horrendously boring in comparison to the one that I had in mind) I felt cheated by the book. I'd suffered through it hoping to get an interesting ending as a reward and in the end I didn't get one.

All in all, it's the story of a guy trying to get back the memory and personality of a person who I didn't feel any real connection with. And I didn't really feel connected to the guy he had become. Perhaps an tale of growing up...

Perhaps a re-reading would serve it better justice. ( )

Even though it was Westlake's last novel, its feel is pulpish as if it were written many years ago. It is not actionpacked as many other Hard Case Crime books are and there is very little crime in here. But, perhaps that was intentional. It is a different kind of Westlake novel and showcases some of his talent.

In a nutshell, the narrator (Paul Cole) is an actor who spends the night, while on tour with his acting company, in bed with a married woman. He explains: "he had chosen her because, being on the road with him, she was handy; and additionally being married. She had already clipped the wings of one male and therefore could demand nothing more from him than he was willing to give."

The husband walks in on them and bam the narrator ends up in the hospital and his memory is not good. He doesn't know who to call or how to get home, except that his home is on Grove Street in New
York. He takes a bus as far as his money will take him and ends up in a small town with not much in it. He ends up making a life there, but knows that he was supposed to go to New York and hopes he will remember when he gets there.

What is interesting about this book is how step by step, it is hard to go through life without remembering anything and how people will misunderstand you and turn away from you if you don't make sense to them. It is an interesting book and a well-told story. I really enjoyed it ( )