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Diagnosis: An exceedingly quiet sci-fi mystery in which characters spend considerable time speculating or revisiting what's already been said.

I OPENED JANE O.'S FILES. 📂 Her case wasn't that strange. My notes:

CHP 01
At age 38, Jane O. made her first visit to a psychiatrist. She was pale and slim. Sat very still. Remained silent. When at last she spoke, she said, "Something strange happened to me." She left without saying much else.

This appears to be a story told from the perspective of Jane's therapist. Consider me intrigued.

The act of remembering, we know from neuroscientists, has a way of rewriting a memory, and this day, in particular, the day I met Jane for the first time, is one I have often revisited in my mind, perhaps altering it slightly with each remembering.

CHP 02
Three days later, Jane was found unconscious on a field in Prospect Park with no recollection of how she'd gotten there.

We have a name for Jane's psychiatrist: Dr. Henry Byrd.

One thing can always mean another, and a doctor learns early the law of what is known as Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation is the likeliest to be true. On that day in the hospital, it seemed to me that the two events—Jane's short visit to my office and this unusual amnesiac episode—were linked, somehow, perhaps two consequences of the same source of internal distress.

Because the story is being told by a psychiatrist, there's an air of clinical detachment. It makes for fairly emotionless writing, yet it suits the character.

Dr. Byrd is slowly materializing as something of a mystery himself. Interesting...

CHP 03
Welp, we can add hallucinations to the list of Jane's mysterious symptoms.

The word for hallucination was for three centuries in the English language interchangeable with the word for "ghost": apparition.

I'm curious: (view spoiler)[Could there be a connection between Jane saying she met Dr. Byrd 20 years ago and the fact that she hallucinated someone who's been dead for 20 years? (hide spoiler)]

The more I learned about the case, the less certain I was about its nature. It was as if each conversation led me further from a diagnosis instead of closer to one.

CHP 04

A new picture of Jane was emerging—some form of psychosis might explain all of her symptoms: hallucination, her memory loss on the day she was found in the park, and also this new contradictory conviction.

CHP 05

Whatever the case, research has established what would otherwise be intuitive: Memory and trauma are powerfully linked.

^ Commentary on memory is ALL OVER this book. It almost feels excessive at this point (and I'm only five chapters in), yet I'm curious to see where Walker is going with this. Memory is unreliable. Memory is linked to trauma. Yes, AND? Gotta keep reading...

PART TWO
Ooh, the perspective has changed. Now we're reading Jane's journal. ✍️

I'd rather face a darkness outside than a darkness within.

My memory sometimes gives me a false sense of familiarity with people—or a sense of familiarity that would feel false to someone else. With Dr. Byrd, I have the feeling, which is true in one sense but not true in another, that I have known him for twenty years.

👉 Some thoughts... (view spoiler)[I am loving the dichotomy Karen Walker Thompson has created with her two protagonists. Dr. Byrd is very aware of the infallibility of memory, yet Jane claims to have a perfect memory, one that allows her to remember events in exact detail decades later. I'm still not sure where Walker is going with this, but it makes for an interesting contrast. (hide spoiler)]

Just finished reading Part 2 (Jane's journal entries). For several pages, she recapped what had already been discussed with Dr. Byrd, even expanded on it slightly. Then she gave us a few more pages of background. Sadly, none of it really caught my attention.

A second observation: I was fine(ish) with Dr. Byrd's voice being dry and unadorned because he's a doctor, but Jane's is equally flat. Her voice has no sparkle, no compelling emotional pull, no sensory embellishments to ground me in the story. I confess, I find this disappointing. 😕

CHP 08
If I'm being honest, I'm tempted to DNF. Then again, I'm coming up on the midpoint fast, so I think I'll hang in there for a bit longer. See if this picks up in some way.

CHP 11

It occurred to me that night, as I read [...] Alice in Wonderland, [...] that it is so often the girls who vanish into realms beyond reach, whether into Oz or the underworld, a hundred years of sleep, or the simplest, most familiar dark woods: madness.

CHP 16
I have officially reached the midpoint. The last few chapters have been little more than Dr. Byrd's (fruitless) speculations about Jane (view spoiler)[ and her sudden disappearance (hide spoiler)]. I'm surprised by how little Jane is actually in the book.

I once read a book on writing that advised against including a character's dream in a story (unless it was truly significant), because character dreams are often irrelevant and therefore waste the reader's time. I have similar feelings about Dr. Byrd's speculations about Jane. Since he keeps circling the same ideas without result, it feels like a waste of time. ‼️Nonetheless, this is a quick read, so I'm not giving up yet.

PART THREE
We've returned to Jane's journal. ✍️

Once the mind begins to question itself, there is no bottom to its questioning.

If I could pore through the missing records in my brain, maybe I could solve this thing.

Much like before, Jane's journal entries recap and expand slightly on what's already happened with Dr. Byrd. They also briefly explore a quiet mystery Jane is trying to solve regarding her memory, but her speculations keep circling the same thing again and again. 🫤

CHP 30
Returning to Dr. Byrd now...

I am having trouble putting down on paper what my real thoughts are in this case, but I'll say this: I am at a loss to explain certain features of Jane's case, certain threads of her delusion, certain very specific and personal details, without violating rules of reality as we currently understand them.

CHP 32
Dr. Byrd finally zeroing in on what's been obvious to reader for quite some time:

(view spoiler)[If there really do exist the kinds of parallel universes that some branches of physics posit, and if we lived in a world—and I am not necessarily saying that we do—where certain human beings could sense the events unfolding in those places, what might that sensory experience take? (hide spoiler)]

CHP 34
Dr. Byrd finally cementing his conclusion

(view spoiler)[I no longer believe that these episodes of Jane's are a kind of psychosis, or that anything is clinically wrong with her. I think it may not be appropriate to think of Jane's experiences as psychiatric symptoms at all. Instead, I believe that they are what the ancients might have called a way of seeing. Not the future, though, but the parallel. (hide spoiler)]

In other words: (view spoiler)[When Jane has dissociative episodes, she is temporarily moving through a parallel timeline. (hide spoiler)]