Mr Nobody

MR.NOBODY by Catherine Steadman.
Right book at the right time would probably describe my reading of Mr Nobody--I really enjoyed it and found it pretty credible until the very end.

Told in multiple voices, the reader is introduced to Dr Emma Lewis a neuropsychiatrist with a special interest in patients suffering memory loss. There are subtle indications that Emma has a background that contains mysterious events that are initially withheld then doled out bit by bit as the story progresses. The other voice is that of Mr Nobody, a man who is recused from a deserted beach suffering memory loss. When he falls unconscious medical personnel are called and he is transported to a local hospital where he is sporadically hysterical and again show more unconscious. When it is discovered he cannot speak a kind-hearted nurse gives him the name Matthew. I'm sure it was no accident that both of these characters have missing and mysterious personal histories.

Told through chapters alternating between these two characters, I was quickly swept up in the atmosphere of danger and unanswered questions. I was completely absorbed in the medical information about Matthew's fugue state and whether he was lying or legitimately compromised. Throughout the novel various experts and authorities visit Matthew without disclosing their interest which adds to the intrigue.

This one really drew me in and I enjoyed a great reading day to find out how all the mysteries would be resolved.

Thanks to @penguinrandomhouse and #LibraryThing for this review copy. show less

I’m getting back into reading more thrillers of late. I like the fast-paced events, the twists and the turns and that not everything has to end in a gunfight. Mr Nobody intrigued me for two reasons – the person with no memories whatsoever has the potential to be anything and how the experts will unlock this mystery using science and a little good luck. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of how different parts of the brain react to certain situations even if the person can’t recall the details of the memory. Of course, there are a couple of intriguing mysteries too.

Mr Nobody is the name given to a man who is found wandering along the beach in the middle of winter, dripping wet. He has no idea who he is and has nothing that show more could identify him on his person. He is taken to the local hospital, where he forms a bond with his nurse in the emergency department, even though he cannot speak. He also manages to thwart a potentially dangerous situation on the ward. This of course gets the press interested who coin the term ‘Mr Nobody’. With a previous disastrous case of a malingerer that was savaged in the press, the British government are keen to do better with this case of potential fugue. Enter Dr Emma Lewis, a neuropsychiatrist who has been bold in her reviews of fugue cases and how they could have been better diagnosed. Emma is asked to go to Norfolk to run tests on Mr Nobody (now being called Matthew), but she has her own personal reasons for not wanting to go. Still, it’s the potential case of a lifetime. But when she meets Matthew, he tells her things nobody else knows…who is this man?

Mr Nobody is somewhat of a slow burn as Mr Nobody’s thoughts on the beach and in the early days of his hospital stay are described. Emma’s expertise and reluctance to return to her home town are also established, but without telling the reader much at all, which is just how I like my thrillers. Give me puzzle clues and let my imagination run wild. (It took quite some time for me to narrow down the possibilities of what had occurred in her past). The last 100 or so pages are in contrast, an absolute rollercoaster. So much is happening and there is so much to take in as everything you though to be true is shattered. It was quite a change of pace from the steady, slower steps of the first parts but it didn’t feel out of place. Likewise, the story is written in an unusual fashion. It’s told in the present tense, by Emma in the first person and Mr Nobody in the third person. When describing it, it sounds like it shouldn’t work but it really does. Present tense isn’t really my thing unless the writing is good. In Mr Nobody, the tense just adds to the sense that something is going to change any minute now…for the worse.

Mr Nobody is a ripper of a thriller, persevere with the setting up of the scene and you will be rewarded with not only the skeletons in Emma’s closet, but who Mr Nobody really is (you will never guess who, which is the key to a sound thriller)!

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the ARC. My review is honest.

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When a man is found on a British beach, drifting in and out of consciousness, with no identification and unable to speak, interest in him is sparked immediately. Neuropsychiatrist Dr. Emma Lewis is asked to assess the patient in a small town deep in the English countryside. This is her field of expertise, this is the chance she's been waiting for, and this case could make her name known across the world. But therein lies the danger. Emma left this same town fourteen years ago and has taken great pains to cover all traces of her past since then. The more time she spends with her patient, the more alarmed she becomes that he knows the one thing about her that nobody is supposed to know.

This was an interesting psychological thriller about show more a man who couldn’t remember much. The first half of the story was a bit slow but the second half moved at a good pace with a number of unexpected things happening. Despite some of Emma’s questionable decisions, it kept me interested and guessing. There were some interesting psychological insights sprinkled throughout, which I liked. The plot was somewhat unique and, even though it’s pretty unlikely something like this would happen, I thought it was easy to go along with and enjoy it. show less

As others have noted, this novel has a great opening line! Also a terrific hook with Emma’s background and name change, the old police files referenced in parts.

The non-talking, seemingly non-communicative man is intriguing. He doesn’t behave like anyone else would in his situation. Even if you landed on another planet you’d try to communicate in some way. Gestures, facial expressions, writing, even grunts. This guy does none of that. It’s a deliberate refusal to engage in a normal way. Why?

Over the course of the story other people besides Emma interact with him and it’s a little eerie. He seems to know things about people that he shouldn’t. Is he just super empathic? A cold reader? Just an ordinary shyster? While not show more overtly sinister, he’s suspicious, but intriguing and likeable. We along with Emma just want to solve his mystery.

Meanwhile her mystery comes to light. Hounded into the English version of Witness Protection, her family scatters and changes names after dad has been exposed as an embezzler. As if that wouldn’t be bad enough, he steals from a relief fund that was supposed to go to helping victims of a bombing attack. No wonder he eats his gun. But the community thinks the family knew - how else could Emma afford to go to medical school? Surely no one on earth has done so without theft being involved. Jeez.

Anyway, now she’s in her old home territory she’s vulnerable to exposure and she is. Stephen/Matthew steals most of the spotlight though and she’s further enmeshed in whatever he’s got going on. He deliberately sought her out and needs her for some specific reason.

While the whole book is very interesting, different and a page-turner, I found the end to be pretty implausible. I could have bought that Mr. Nobody was a bombing victim bent on some revenge scheme, but it’s weirder than that. He is always rebooting. He’ll wake up just as he had at the beginning of the story - in some strange place with very little memory of anything that came before. Just flashes and impressions. So many times this has happened to him that many of the ‘textbook cases’ of this condition are really just him - over and over and over. But because the cases are so scattered, no one has realized it’s all just one patient.

So he invents ways to “remember”. Think the movie Memento. And he finds his way to Emma because she can cure him. Except he doesn’t like the cure she offers which is surgery. I guess he figured she had a magic wand or something. But it was all his careful orchestration that rang false to me. It’s very involved and even a person with great wealth, power and autonomy would find it hard to set her up the way Mr. Nobody did. It was cool in an A-Team kind of way, but ultimately it burst the bubble of believability for me. show less

After reading a third of this book the day I received it, I stayed up way past my bedtime to read the rest of it the next night. It was that good! Neuropsychiatrist Emma Lewis is compelled to take on the case of a man with no memory, found on a British beach. But Emma has to leave London to treat him in a small town in the countryside . . . the same town she left 14 years ago after a family tragedy that forced them to change their names. The chapters alternate between Emma's voice and Matthew's, the man with no identity. As the book advances, we slowly learn the story of what happened when Emma was a teen. The novel is about Emma's dedication to her profession and a profound desire to help Matthew find his true self, as well as dealing show more with her fears and emotions caused by her return to her home town. There is suspense throughout the book and twists and turns to the end. The author has made the characters very real and likable, which makes the end all the more surprising. show less

With just a name written on his hand, The Man regains consciousness on a British beach with no memory of who he was or is. In London, neuropsychiatrist Emma Lewis is hoping that his case will make her career. But the patient brings her back to her childhood home, and a horrific past that led to her and her family relocating and changing their names. As she fights to hide her identity and he struggles to regain his, their presents collide.

My thoughts on this book are completely scattered. I’m not sure what, exactly, I think of it. I loved it. I hated it. I was annoyed by it. I was disappointed by it. It got my heart pounding. I never knew I could be so mixed up by a book!

So let’s break it down.

I Loved and Hated It (for personal show more reasons)
This book is right up my professional alley. Mostly. I went to school to be a neuropsychologist, but wasn’t able to finish my degree, so this book really spoke to my brain. Fugue, malingering, brain scans, memory exercises, therapy. I loved all of it. Sometimes it did seem to read a bit like a textbook, especially when something more technical was being explained. As a reader, it was a little disjointed, but, as someone who studied a related field, it felt like home. I found myself identifying with Emma because she was doing exactly what I had planned to do. At the same time, I hated it because I was jealous of her for doing what is now out of my reach. I didn’t know it was possible to be so jealous of a character.

I Was Annoyed By It
What annoyed me the most was that very little of The Man’s side of the story was told. I get that the book was about the neuropsychiatrist trying to diagnose and treat him, and that, by telling more of his story, it might have revealed too much too soon. But, honestly, I wish the reader had been allowed into his mad mind a little more. It would have been fascinating to read more about his experience of the world with absolutely no memory of who he was. It might have also been a nice way of showcasing how memory functions.

The other thing that annoyed me was how slow the story seemed to be moving. I think it was due in part to the repetitive parts of Emma’s personal story. We’re told over and over about Emma’s past, and only a tiny bit more is revealed each time. We get fragments over the course of the novel, alongside a great deal of her fear of people finding out about her family’s history in the area. It was slow and repetitive, and sometimes I felt like the overall story became bogged down by it.

Overall, it’s a fairly simple story of a neuropsychiatrist attempting to diagnose a patient, help him regain his memories, and find out how the two of them might be connected. But it’s slow going.

I Was Disappointed By It
The reveal of how The Man and Emma were connected didn’t feel as satisfying as I had hoped, or even as it should have. The entire book built their connection up to be something incredible. While it was quite interesting, and more than a bit unnerving, I felt it was a bit tenuous. The mystery of how they were connected could have been solved rather quickly had Emma done more research. So, it felt weak to me.

I was also a little disappointed by Emma’s past. The beginning of the book built it up to be something horrific. It did turn out to be terrible, but not quite as horrific as I thought it might be. It was almost as though the author had gone in with one, dark idea and then took a turn and changed it halfway through. It was still surprising, but wasn’t as dark as I had hoped it would be.

It Got My Heart Pounding
Truly, the last quarter was thrilling. As a thriller, this book heavily disappointed me. Until the end. It was a real page turner for me during those last chapters. I can usually see how the character is going to be able to get out of trouble, but I really couldn’t until she did manage to get herself out. I couldn’t stop reading because I needed to know how the story was going to end. This is where all the action was, all the excitement.

Personally, I found the process of diagnosing and treating to be fascinating as it aligned with my own background, but it was more mentally satisfying. The last quarter of it was definitely for the benefit of my heart. I was glued to the pages.

Overall
I’m mixed up about this book. I did enjoy reading most of it, but some parts were just completely unsatisfactory. Still, the characters were intriguing and the story was interesting. I loved all the neuro, which I think was given in a very understandable way, so I might be a little more biased than I’d like to be. Overall, this is more mystery than thriller, but had an interesting premise.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Ballantine, for a free e-copy. All opinions expressed are my own. show less

I was so excited to receive this requested title as a member of the Early Reviewer Group on LibraryThing. I was drawn to the first words of the description..."He wants to remember. She needs to forget. . . " followed by "Who is Mr. Nobody?" I wanted to know.

I opened the novel and read, "If the car crashed at this speed the impact wouldn't be enough to kill us instantly. Which you might think is a good thing. But it's not." It's outstanding when a description hooks you, and then the opening lines of the novel cinch the hook, so you know you'll be immersed in the pages until you can't keep your eyes open any longer. The words were popping out of the first sentence car…crashed…speed…impact…kill…us…instantly, and I had so many show more questions...

• The car is speeding, and I don't even know where we are.
• There is an "us," and I don't even know who is driving, let alone the dynamics of "us." Relatives? Friends?
• Now I feel like I must know the speed of the car.
• But now, as I simultaneously realize the "us" will not be killed instantly, which I think is a good thing, I will learn more about the occupants of the car as "us" will survive. I'm processing the words…"But it's not." How can it not? I wanted to know. I wanted to know all of the answers to my questions. I wanted to know everything.

In reading forward to Chapter 1..." The Man Day 1" there is "Sounds of the sea. Waves crash and pull back, the pop and shhh." I pause and think the sea has made an appearance in many books I've read as I love to read novels with the setting of a beach and ocean waves, but this feels like the first time that I can truly hear the sounds of the sea in my visualization of this story. I do not hear the sounds of the ocean from my own past experiences but luxuriate in this story's visualization due to the perfect descriptive writing of the author.

As the first page of Chapter 1 ended, I didn't turn the page but reread the entire page and knew I would revel in the descriptive language of the writing, which heightened and enhanced my reading experience. I called it perfect descriptive writing as descriptions were not tedious but sentences that could be succinct yet reveal the storyline, characters, setting, framework, and mood. As the story unfolded, I learned that the woman from the description "She needs to forget" shares the mantra "No one becomes a psychiatrist by accident." However, I had never heard of her specialization in psychiatry, so I was quite intrigued.

There were multiple mysteries, and each time I guessed, there was another revelation: each guess not only dissolved but was blown to smithereens. I also wondered how Catherine Steadman learned about this specialization of psychiatry. That question is answered in the author's Acknowledgements at the end of the novel so be sure to appreciate this information that led to an ingenious mind writing an extraordinary novel. show less