A woman born with perfect memory suddenly develops a series of eerie psychological symptoms—blackouts, hallucinations, premonitions, an inexplicable sense of dread. It is the first year after her child is born, and she and her untraditional psychiatrist struggle to solve the mystery of what is happening to Jane, to her mind. Then Jane suddenly goes missing and is found a day later lying unconscious in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, with no memory of her missing hours. A police detective becomes suspicious of Jane, and begins to track her, convinced that Jane is lying. What happened to Jane, and what do these peculiar experiences, including in something called a fugue state, have to do with a hallucination Jane has about a young man she knew twenty years ago, who warns her of a disaster ahead?
Quiet, cool-toned ... Walker’s world-building around the opaque adult Jane...is less assured ... Pizazz is not a narrative prerequisite, but a little levity and specificity, a more colorful interior world, might have gone a long way toward deeper investment in the characters and their outcomes. As it is, the story, with its slow-churn revelations and a conclusion that tips toward the supernatural, builds an eerie, incomplete mood: a scrim of subdued intrigue, obscuring stranger things.
Though this engrossing book often moves with a thriller’s pace, there is little sensationalism in Walker’s writing. She approaches Jane’s story through spare, deliberate prose ... Becomes an emotional journey into the heart of what drives us, what breaks us and what keeps us walking the line of mundane daily life.
