Amnesia

More about the book

An archivist in a library in Toronto is about to close his office to get married in a few hours, but his exit is interrupted by Izzy Darlow, a whimsical character who immediately begins to tell the story of his life. The archivist cannot escape this strange, flowing narration and, as if hypnotized, decides to let himself be swept away. Thus begins the story of Izzy, his parents, his siblings, and then Katie, a patient in a psychiatric hospital, singular events that proceed in parallel only to overlap, floating within an architecture of space and memory that records and preserves everything. Memory and oblivion become for Izzy an act of constructing his own life, a factory of existence, and the mind transforms into a time machine that helps make daily experiences more bearable. The events of Izzy's life resurface from time and forgetfulness, creating a gothic world populated by miracles and horrors, by human and transcendent gestures. The amnesia of the title reveals itself as that which often follows dreams, a flickering memory of something deep that obsesses and eludes us, a mystery to be pieced together and transformed into a story.