Editorial Content for The Forgetting Time
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Janie was pushing 40 when she found herself unexpectedly pregnant following a one-night stand with a married man. Four years later, however, she wouldn’t trade her life with Noah for anything. Her smart, affectionate son is the light of her life, even if it’s sometimes hard to juggle work, family and social life as a single mom.
But even though Janie adores Noah, something about his behavior, especially recently, troubles her. He often wakes up screaming from nightmares of drowning and is terrified of taking a bath or even washing his hands. Most upsetting to Janie is that, especially when Noah is frightened, he wails that he wants to go home and be with his mama, even when he’s in Janie’s arms in the Brooklyn apartment where he’s lived his whole life.
"[W]hether or not you believe in the phenomena that Guskin explores here, there’s much to consider in this provocative debut novel... THE FORGETTING TIME is a passionate entreaty to readers to embrace the present moment, to find joy, comfort and connection in the here and now."
When an incident at Noah’s preschool leads to the school director suspending him until Janie can get his behavior under control, Janie takes Noah to a number of child psychologists and psychiatrists, none of whom can give her satisfactory answers. One even suggests that Noah might be schizophrenic and prescribes anti-psychotic medication for him. Janie, on the verge of losing clients from her architecture and interior design business due to her struggles with Noah, is just about desperate enough to try anything, even admitting that he is very sick.
But then she comes across the work of Dr. Jerome Anderson, a psychiatrist whose unorthodox (to put it mildly) beliefs and approach have defined his life’s work even as they’ve derailed his one-time ambitions for more conventional professional recognition. Anderson is intrigued by Noah’s story, so much so that he offers to help Janie get to the bottom of Noah’s symptoms.
Anderson has some secrets of his own --- namely that he’s suffering from aphasia, a progressive form of dementia that is quickly cutting him off from his ability to remember words and language. As someone who has always valued clarity in thinking and writing, this is painful for Anderson. But he recognizes in Noah his last chance to write about an American case of the phenomenon he studies, a case study that will finally round out the other examples in his book manuscript and enable him to spread his research to a wider audience.
The ideas that Anderson (and, by extension, author Sharon Guskin, who includes lengthy case studies from a real-world expert on the topic) espouses are controversial, to say the least, and certainly will be fodder for more than one book group discussion, debate or outright argument. But whether or not you believe in the phenomena that Guskin explores here, there’s much to consider in this provocative debut novel --- from cultural differences in attitudes toward life and death to the question of whether or not parents can ever truly know their own children.
More than anything, THE FORGETTING TIME is a passionate entreaty to readers to embrace the present moment, to find joy, comfort and connection in the here and now.
Teaser
One day, the preschool office calls and says Janie needs to come in to talk about her four-year-old son, Noah. And life as she knows it stops. For Jerome Anderson, life as he knows it has stopped. A deadly diagnosis has made him realize he is approaching the end of his life. He spent his life searching for that something else. And with Noah, he thinks he's 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 --- and when that door opens, all of their questions will be answered.
Promo
One day, the preschool office calls and says Janie needs to come in to talk about her four-year-old son, Noah. And life as she knows it stops. For Jerome Anderson, life as he knows it has stopped. A deadly diagnosis has made him realize he is approaching the end of his life. He spent his life searching for that something else. And with Noah, he thinks he's 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 --- and when that door opens, all of their questions will be answered.
About the Book
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.
Audiobook available, narrated by David Pittu and Susan Bennett
