Synopses & Reviews
In 1992, the novelist Jill Robinson woke from a coma to discover that she had lost her memory and all sense of who she was. The man at the end of her bed was her husband, not her doctor; her children weren't at school, they were adults living on the other side of the Atlantic.
Past Forgetting is the story of one woman's search for her past and determined reconstruction of her present. But how do you behave when you have no frame of reference; how do you relate to those around you when you no longer have any past to share with them?
Against all odds, Jill Robinson gets there. She takes us with her on her exploration of the connections between memory and creativity, celebrity and anonymity. From her first tentative steps outside her London home to her voyage of discovery in Los Angeles taking her back to the seventies world of Hockney,
Polanski and Hopper, Robinson forges new paths to memory. Robert Redford tells her stories about her childhood; Cary Grant reminds her of the days when her father ran MGM; Barbra Streisand recalls the long days of their friendship.
Past Forgetting reveals a woman of wit and compassion, whose journey through the haze of memory loss challenges our understanding of the nature of memory and recollection.
Review
"An unflinching account of amnesia and the terror of being a writer without memory....Robinson occasionally confuses her life with movie plots." Publishers Weekly
Review
"It is a rare, almost heroically well-written, at times hair-raising account of what the experience is really like, from the inside." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"An intriguing...view from inside the author's head." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"An exquisitely written perceptive book describing a traumatic interruption in a woman's life. There are lessons here for everyone..." Anne Rice
Review
"One of Hollywood's genuine princesses has produced an extraordinary work: a memoir about her amnesia. The extraordinary thing is it works." Carolyn See
About the Author
Jill Robinson, author of Bed/Time/Story and Perdido, grew up in Los Angeles where her father, Dore Schary, was the only writer to run a major studio, Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Jill has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, written for the New York Times, American and French Vogue, the Chicago Tribune, Vanity Fair and the Telegraph. She has also served as a Fulbright Commissioner. She now lives in London with her husband, Stuart Shaw.