The Memory Game (42 page)

We came across the controversy in 1994 and we had the dual reaction that is perhaps characteristic of writers. We were shocked by the suffering involved and also saw it as compelling material for a thriller. We had a feeling of urgency also, because we thought we had better get a move on, because other people might have the same idea.

As it turned out, the part of the subject that most engaged us was not the subject of sexual abuse but the possible manipulation of the relationship between patient and therapist.

The controversy seems to have passed into history now. The decisive weapons against the therapists who specialized in recovering memories proved to be not dissenting arguments but, as so often, the financial penalties. These took the form of litigation from their damaged patients and the refusal of the medical insurance companies to pay for the therapy.

Even so, some of the factual books on the subject are still well worth reading.
Remembering Satan
by Lawrence Wright, an account of satantic abuse accusations in a small American town, reads like a thriller in its own right.
Victims of Memory
by Mark Pendergast is a brilliant, intensely painful account of the subject by a writer who was himself the subject of unfounded accusations.
Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Waters gives a lucid account of the controversy.
The Memory Wars
by Frederick Crews joins his analysis of the subject with a devastating critique of the legacy of Sigmund Freud.

top tens

TEN FAVOURITE BOOKS ABOUT MEMORY

Funes the Memorious
by Jorge Luis Borges.
The great story of a man cursed by an inability to forget.

The Go-Between
by L. P. Hartley.
'The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there...'

In Memoriam
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The greatest work of poetic mourning in the language?

In Search of Lost Time
by Marcel Proust.
Is the meaning of life to be found not outside, but in our own memories? About ten times as long as any other novel and about a hundred times as good.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
by Oliver Sacks.
Understanding the brain through the extraordinary ways it can go wrong - including the 'lost mariner', whose short-term memory has been destroyed, trapping him in an eternal, ephemeral present.

Atonement
by Ian McEwan.
Memory as apology, memory as fiction.

The Memory Wars
by Frederick Crews.
A polemic about Freud, therapy and recovered memory. Wonderful knockabout stuff, with Crews the last man standing.

The Prelude
by William Wordsworth.
The great epic of memory as redemption.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
The great romance of memory as curse.

Speak, Memory
by Vladimir Nabokov.
Is memory the new religion? Read this, Proust and
The Prelude
, and you might start to think so.

TEN FAVOURITE FILMS ABOUT MEMORY

Bad Day at Black Rock
(1955).
A whole town has forgotten its terrible secret, until Spencer Tracy gets off the train one day...

The Bourne Identity
(2002)/
The Bourne Conspiracy
(2004).
A man is washed up on a beach, having forgotten he is an elite secret agent. And then he starts to remember. Oliver Sacks meets James Bond.

Citizen Kane
(1941).
Why, at the moment of his death, did Charles Foster Kane remember his sled?

Dead of Night
(1945).
A terrifying film about the hazards of forgetting your dreams when you wake up.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(2004).
If you could wipe away the memory of a painful love affair, would you...?

Groundhog Day
(1993).
Everyone in the world has amnesia, except Bill Murray. Originally written by a Zen Buddhist, this tale was rewritten by Harold Ramis as one of the funniest films ever made. Touching too.

Memento
(2000).
A detective's investigation is hampered by the fact that he has no short-term memory and must tattoo the clues on his body. And the film unfolds backwards. And it's fantastic.

Shoah
(1985).
A documentary about the Holocaust with no historical footage, no photographs, no commentary, just witnesses describing what they remember.

The 39 Steps
(1935).
One of the most entertaining of all cinematic thrillers, in which the secret plans are stolen and learned by the music hall star, 'Mr Memory', in order to be smuggled abroad. Nowadays they would just email it.

Wild Strawberries
(1957).
A road movie in which an old man drives across Sweden to receive an honorary degree and through his own memories in search of what he has lost in his life. Ingmar Bergman's most moving film.

Jane Martello's recipes

Jane Martello's Bloody Mary

Pour a half litre of tomato juice into a jug with a handful of ice cubes. Add a few good shakes of Worcestershire sauce, several drops of Tabasco, three twists of black pepper, three pinches of celery salt, half a wine glass of Russian vodka and a quarter of a wine glass of dry sherry. Stir and serve.

Wild Mushroom Risotto

Assuming you haven't just gone and picked your own in the woods, take a couple of generous handfuls of dried wild mushrooms (particularly porcini) and soak them in warm water for at least an hour. Finely chop a large onion and fry with garlic and seasoning in olive oil until translucent. Squeeze out the mushrooms gently (do not throw away the water), and add to the pan. Cook for a minute or two, then pour in a cup and a half (or thereabouts) of risotto rice. Fry briefly, and add a splash of red wine or vermouth, and then the water (now a deep, brackish brown) in which the dried mushrooms were soaked. Cook slowly until the rice is cooked, adding more water or stock as needed. At the last minute, drop in a knob of butter and then as much grated parmesan as you wish. Eat with robust red wine.

the books

THE SAFE HOUSE

You let a traumatized young woman into your home.
And into your heart.
You want to protect her like a member of your own family.
To save her from the darkness that's pursuing her...

Samantha Laschen is a doctor specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder. She's moved to the coast to escape her problems and to be alone with her young daughter. But now the police want her to take in Fiona Mackenzie, a girl whose parents have been savagely murdered. Yet by allowing Fiona in, Sam is exposing herself - and her daughter - to risks she couldn't possibly have imagined.

'A superior psychological thriller'
The Times

'Emotionally acute'
Mail on Sunday

BENEATH THE SKIN

Someone's watching you.
You don't know who and you don't know why.
But
he
knows you...

Zoe, Jennifer and Nadia are three women with nothing in common except the letters they receive, each one full of intimate details about every aspect of their lives - from the clothes they wear to the way they act when they think they're alone. And if that isn't terrifying enough, the letters also contain a shocking promise: that soon each life will come to a sudden, violent end. Can Zoe, Jennifer and Nadia discover who their tormentor is? And if so, will any of them live long enough to do anything about it?

'A nail-biting, can't-put-it-down read'
Marie Claire

'Chilling, startling'
Daily Mail

'Brilliant'
Evening Standard

KILLING ME SOFTLY

You have it all: the boyfriend, the friends, the career.
Then you meet a stranger and on impulse, you sacrifice everything.
You're in passionate love.
And grave danger...

Alice Loudon couldn't resist abandoning her old, safe life for a wild affair. And in Adam Tallis, a rugged mountaineer with a murky past, she finds a man who can teach her things about herself that she never even suspected. But sexual obsession has its dark side - and so does Adam. Soon both are threatening all that Alice has left. First her sanity. Then her life.

'Compulsive, sexy, scary'
Elle

'Cancel all appointments and unplug the phone. Once started you will do nothing until you finish this thriller'
Harpers & Queen

'A real frightener'
Guardian

THE RED ROOM

The man who almost killed you has been accused of murder.
And you hold the key to his future...

After psychologist Kit Quinn is brutally attacked by a prisoner, she is determined to get straight back to work. When the police want her help in linking the man who attacked her to a series of murders, she refuses to simply accept the obvious. But the closer her investigation takes her to the truth behind the savage crimes, the nearer Kit gets to the dark heart of her own terror.

'Gripping, chilling, moving'
Observer

'Absorbing, highly addictive'
Evening Standard

'French is excellent at building up suspense and elegantly exploiting all our worst fears'
Daily Mail

SECRET SMILE

You have an affair.
You finish it.
You think it's over.
You're dead wrong...

Miranda Cotton thinks she's put boyfriend Brendan out of her life for good. But two weeks later, he's intimately involved with her sister. Soon what began as an embarrassment becomes threatening - then even more terrifying than a girl's worst nightmare. Because this time Brendan will stop at nothing to be part of Miranda's life - even if it means taking it from her...

'Creepy, genuinely gripping'
Heat

'A must read'
Cosmopolitan

'Nicci French at the top of her game'
Woman & Home

LAND OF THE LIVING

You wake in the dark, gagged and bound.
He says he will kill you - just like all the rest.

Abbie Devereaux is being held against her will. She doesn't know where she is or how she got there. She's so terrified she can barely remember her own name - and she's sure of just one thing: that she will survive this nightmare. But even if she does make it back to the land of the living, Abbie knows that he'll still be out there, looking for her.

And next time, there may be no escape.

'Shocking, uncomfortable, exhilarating'
Independent on Sunday

'Dark, gripping'
Heat

CATCH ME WHEN I FALL

You're a whirlwind. You're a success. You live life on the edge. But who'll catch you when you fall?

Holly Krauss lives life in the fast lane. A successful young businesswoman with a stable home life, she is loved and admired by all who meet her. But that's only one side of Holly. The other sees her take regular walks on the wild side - where she makes evermore reckless mistakes.

And when those mistakes start mounting up, the two sides of Holly blur together and her life quickly spirals out of control. She thinks she's being stalked, someone is demanding money from her - threats lurk around every corner and those closest to Holly are running out of patience.

But is she alone responsible for what's happening? Are her fears just the paranoia of an illness - or intimations of
very real
danger? And if she can no longer rely on her own judgement, who can she trust to catch her when she falls?

LOSING YOU

What is worse than your child going missing? Your child going missing and nobody believing you...

Nina Landry has given up city life for the isolated community of Sandling Island, lying off the bleak east coast of England. At night the wind howls. Sometimes they are cut off by the incoming tide. For Nina though it is home. It is safe.

But when Nina's teenage daughter Charlie fails to return from a sleepover on the day they're due to go on holiday, the island becomes a different place altogether. A place of secrets and suspicions. Where no one - friends, neighbours or the police - believes Nina's instinctive fear that her daughter is in terrible danger. Alone, she undergoes a frantic search for Charlie. And as day turns to night, she begins to doubt not just whether they'll leave the island for their holiday - but whether they will ever leave it again.

UNTIL IT'S OVER (available in hardback)

Dead. Unlucky.