Book Notices | The Forgetting by Hannah Beckerman

Hannah Beckerman, The Forgetting

Amazon   In The Forgetting, Hannah Beckerman tells the story of two women in problematic relationships. Livvy married Dominic after a whirlwind romance, and they now have a baby, Leo. She's still in the honeymoon phase of her marriage, and what she doesn't see clearly—and we do—is that Dominic is manipulative and controlling. Our second protagonist, Anna, has been married longer to her husband, Stephen, and their relationship isn't perfect either. Stephen can be a little controlling, too, but it's harder for us to recognize and condemn it in his case because the issue is complicated by Anna's amnesia, the result of a car crash that occurred just before the book opens. So is Stephen keeping her from looking at their old photo albums, for example, because he wants to aid in her recovery, as he claims, or is something else going on? Beckerman tells the stories of these women in chapters that alternate throughout most of the book. It's a highly readable story, but also sometimes maddening. I wanted to reach through the pages and slap Livvy into awareness, or just slap Dominic. His gaslighting, the way he warps truths to undermine his wife's sense of reality, is infuriating. Things come to a head, of course, and readers may not be expecting the way the story is resolved. I wasn't.