Alison Booth

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117 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2021 last heard Sep 2021

Alison Booth’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Bookshelf · The Book Club: On Memory · 3 Sep 2021 podcast

different memories and so Robbie has received this letter from his last version of himself which is telling him how to live his life.

So that's where the novel begins with this letter from the previous version and I'd just like to read out one little paragraph from this letter.

Memories are like armor.

Without them, you have no control, nothing to hold your shape.

You become whatever anyone tells you to be.

That's why you have to be on your guard from the very first moments.

So with that terrible reminder of how careful he has to be, the new Robbie begins his countdown

to the anticipated date when he'll lose his memory.

And so the novel then begins at day 12, and then we count down to the anticipated event.

And this builds up really quite a remarkable tension.

Yeah, he got through each day with a very rigid routine.

So he would get up, do a quite extensive set of exercises, which were clearly very important to him.

And the question I asked myself when I read that was, okay, so this guy has muscle memory.

which is actually dealt with a little bit later because he's able to figure out a set of exercises to do and be compelled to do them.

I mean, I personally found it very difficult to understand how much muscle memory a person in that situation would have.

you know, compared with memories of his past.

So I suspended disbelief and I thought, okay, well, he's lost his memory.

But there are certain things that come back to him, like the exercise routines, and he knows to have a shower afterwards and then to have breakfast.

Gradually, other things come back to him as well, which are labelled muscle memory, not, you know, memory of his identity.

gradually he understands more about the exercises and then ultimately he'll understand how to use a mobile phone.

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