Mid 2. Husband and wife team, Nicci Gerard and Sean French, offered a tantalising premise for their debut psychological thriller of an investigation into suppressed memories, and the reliability of ‘recovered memory’ techniques in treatment of those failing to deal with trauma. The discovery of the buried corpse of Natalie Martello, unearthed in the garden of the family estate in Shropshire 25 years after her disappearance, acts as the spur for Jane, childhood friend and our narrator, to question all that she has held dear over her relationships with the Martello clan. The unease from this gruesome discovery adds to the stress of her recent divorce from the deceased’s eldest brother, leading her to seek professional help from therapist, Alex Dermott-Brown. Persuaded by the latter to undergo hypnosis to recover her suppressed memories surrounding the disappearance of her friend, Jane gradually reconstructs the fateful events of that day. Yet, questions also arise over this therapist’s motives, and over the veracity of the recollections which come back to our protagonist. It is unfortunate that the potential drama offered by some of the flashbacks emerging from these sessions is not taken up, with the result that the pace is pedestrian at best. In addition, the weighting of the plot in favour of these recollected feelings has the adverse effect of seemingly lessening the real-time emotional responses to Natalie’s fate. Another weakness of this debut is the endless cast of characters whose appearance add no value to the development of the plot, with the reader, in an unintended ironic twist on the title of the novel, attempting in vain to keep track. The single biggest issue, however, remains the inadequacy of the final twist, which aside from being far from earth-shattering, underlines the implausibility of such an obvious discrepancy between the body’s disposal and the accepted timeline of events escaping the authorities.
I was not very enamoured with this book, it took way too long to get going and the whole twist felt pretty adequate and absurd when we got there, plus I had already figured it out. I just couldn't take to the main character (a sign of how unispired I was that I finished this book 10 minutes ago and have already forgotten her name...) and was quickly fed up of her 'I need a cigarette', 'I'm having a cigarette', 'I am smoking my last cigarette' and so on, ALL the way through. I also found the other characters pretty annoying from bossy Kim to ridiculous Alan (?), personality-less Martha and the wet lettuce that was Claude. Not counting all the other hundreds of people that kept popping up but who were so unimportant to the story that I could not keep track of who was a Martello, who was a spouse of, who was no relation at all, who happened to just be passing by... there are way too many extras that added nothing to the story. Additionally, I am not sure how this can be billed as a 'thriller' as the lack of pace and intrigue made it more like reading a memoir for 90% of the book.Haivng read reviews of other books by the author, it seems that my first foray into their work is the weakest one so I may try others at a later date but this has not inspired me to continue for now. High hopes have been signifcantly dashed for now.
Do You like book The Memory Game (1998)?
This was an enjoyable book, although it got off to rather a slow start. I guessed the twist long before it actually happened. Overall the characters were not very likeable and I got rather irritated with Jane and her “I had a cigarette…, I needed a cigarette…” - she was a heavy smoker, we get the picture! I didn’t think this was as good as the write-up suggested, but I did enjoy it, although from reading on Amazon afterwards, I gather that this is one of the weaker ones and that they do improve as the writing matures. I read ‘The Safe House’ several years ago and remember that being much better, so this hasn’t put me off trying more.
—Janet
I like plowing through this kind of book. It's a kind've throwaway psychological thriller, which takes such a short time to read you feel a little guilty for all the effort put into writing it in the first place.The Memory Game stands out for me, partly because it was the first Nicci French novel I read, but mainly because of the way it describes food. There's something in the description of the ice-cold gin stored in the freezer, the mushroom risotto, the olives and endless red wine, that I really enjoyed. I read The Memory Game about 15 years ago (or whenever it was first released) and I still want a glass of red wine thinking about the way it described red wine.
—Alex
Once a year the Martellos have a large family party to gather mushrooms, although Jane is divorcing Claud she is still in attendance and supervising the building of a large new summer house in the grounds. Whilst the foundations are being dug a skeleton is discovered which is quickly thought to be that of 16 year old Natalie Martello who had disappeared 25 years ago. Natalie was originally thought to have run away and the disappearance nows becomes a crime. Jane and Natalie were best friends who had grown up together, they dressed alike and looked alike. That Natalie is dead is not really such a surprise, finding her buried in plain view of the house is the shock. Who killed Natalie and buried her there? Is it really possible to work things out after so many years? As evidence is put together we have to think back to earlier parts of the book to piece the clues into a whole. It seems that Jane holds the key to the mystery but can she remember enough of the details to find the killer? I enjoyed this, I have to say that I did the suspect the killer from early on in the book but couldn't figure out how and when it happened because of the long accepted theory of when she had disappeared.
—Kay
