The Forgetting Time: A Novel - Softcover

Guskin, Sharon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250118719 ISBN 13: 9781250118714

Publisher: Flatiron Books, 2017

Synopsis

“What if what you did mattered more because life happened again and again, consequences unfolding across decades and continents?...A relentlessly paced page-turner and a profound meditation on the meaning of life.”
―Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Train

What happens to us after we die? What happens before we are born? At once a riveting mystery and a testament to the profound connection between a child and parent, The Forgetting Time will lead you to reevaluate everything you believe...

What would you do if your four-year-old son claimed he had lived another life and that he wants to go back to it? That he wants his other mother?

Single mom Janie is trying to figure out what is going on with her beloved son Noah. Noah has never been ordinary. He loves to make up stories, and he is constantly surprising her with random trivia someone his age has no right knowing. She always chalked it up to the fact that Noah was precocious―mature beyond his years. But Noah’s eccentricities are starting to become worrisome. One afternoon, Noah’s preschool teacher calls Janie: Noah has been talking about shooting guns and being held under water until he can’t breathe. Suddenly, Janie can’t pretend anymore. The school orders him to get a psychiatric evaluation. And life as she knows it stops for herself and her darling boy.

For Jerome Anderson, life as he knows it has already stopped. Diagnosed with aphasia, his first thought as he approaches the end of his life is, I’m not finished yet. Once an academic star, a graduate of Yale and Harvard, a professor of psychology, he threw everything away to pursue an obsession: the stories of children who remembered past lives. Anderson became the laughing stock of his peers, but he never stopped believing that there was something beyond what anyone could see or comprehend. He spent his life searching for a case that would finally prove it. And with Noah, he thinks he may have found it.

Soon, Noah, Janie, and Anderson will find themselves knocking on the door of a mother whose son has been missing for eight years. When that door opens, all of their questions will be answered.

Gorgeously written and fearlessly provocative, Sharon Guskin’s debut explores the lengths we will go for our children. It examines what we regret in the end of our lives and hope for in the beginning, and everything in between.

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of February 2016: To say The Forgetting Time is intriguing would be an understatement. Author Sharon Guskin opens her debut novel with a captivating story of a single mother's unstoppable desire to help her son understand his very real memories from another life that constantly haunt him. Later, after you have devoured the book, you realize Guskin has craftily and subtly drawn you in through an exploration of connection, regret, and the meaning of things. No matter your thoughts on the afterlife you will be engrossed by this story, and possibly left contemplating what you thought you believed before. -- Penny Mann

About the Author

SHARON GUSKIN lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons. She has been a fellow at Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and Ragdale, and has degrees from Yale University and the Columbia University School of the Arts.The Forgetting Time is her first novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Flatiron Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1250118719
• ISBN 13: 9781250118714
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368