The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia by David Stuart MacLean
Reviewed by Steve(n)
If every new experience is a bead on a bracelet, then memory is the string that unites these events into the coherent chain of a human life. David Stuart MacLean had the uncanny and horrifying misfortune of having his string chemically slashed, and, on a train platform in India in 2002, he was left to pick up the disjointed pieces of his existence suddenly without an identity or any clue as to how to tie one together. In The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia, he splices together the mismatched strands of his unreliable consciousness to make sense of the singular terror of losing yourself in an instant and, having been robbed of an ego, the resolution and groundless conviction that it takes to build yourself from scratch.
The first thing that David recalls is, ironically, sudden and radical memory loss. From there, he must rely on human compassion, hallucinatory clues, and no small degree of determination to find his way to safety and solve the puzzle of his life. His journey takes him from a halfway house and mental institution in India to a home he has forgotten in Ohio to recover some semblance of the person he was and determine if that was a person he wants to be again. The Answer to the Riddle is Me raises questions of human identity, pharmaceutical recklessness, and existential despair as it navigates the faulty byways of a compromised personality. Expanded from his celebrated essay on NPR’s This American Life, David Stuart MacLean’s fascinating memoir is a brilliantly sparse redemption story that illuminates the fragile threads that hold us all together.
David Stuart MacLean will be appearing at BookPeople on Friday January 31st at 7:00 p.m. to discuss The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia, answer questions, and sign copies of the book. As with every event at BookPeople, attendance is absolutely free and open to the public, but, in order to have anything signed, a copy of The Answer to the Riddle is Me must be purchased from the store. This event is not to be missed, so, if you find yourself taking a commonly overprescribed malaria medication, it may be helpful to write down the specifics ahead of time.
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Copies if The Answer to the Riddle is Me are currently available on our shelves at BookPeople and via bookpeople.com. If you’d like a signed copy of the book and can’t make it to the event, you can order a signed edition via bookpeople.com.
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