I Forgot to Remember

November 4, 2013
A whack on the head by a ceiling fan when she was 22 resulted in the wiping clean of Su Meck’s memory, including marriage and the birth of two children. In this tenebrous, strangely compelling memoir, Meck, with the help of journalist Visé and many people along the way who helped fill in the gaps of her life, re-creates the freak accident in her Fort Worth kitchen that evening in May 1988 that left her with a precarious “closed-head injury.” Despite dizziness and balance issues, Meck seemed physically fine after several weeks in the hospital, though she suffered devastating memory loss (a rare form called “complete retrograde amnesia”): essentially, she did not recognize anyone from her past, including her family, and had to relearn the basic skills familiar even to a six-year-old. The challenges, of course, were enormous, especially since her husband, Jim, was often traveling for work, and the care of two small boys was overwhelming. As Meck went through the motions of being a wife and mother, she felt and acted like a “weird imposter” who was good at “copying” other people without there being any substance behind her facade of normalcy. Meck relates with excruciating honesty her journey out of oblivion. Agent, Peter Steinberg, Steinberg Agency.

September 15, 2013

In 1988, at age 22, Meck was hit on the head by a ceiling fan and awoke with all her memories gone, never to be regained. A high-profile book for the spring.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 1, 2013
It was a freaky accident. When a ceiling fan fell and struck her, Su Meck received a gash in her forehead. She writes, This was the day that my old life ended and my new life began. The old Su was rebellious, the new Su was compliant after suffering not only a traumatic brain injury (TBI) but also complete retrograde amnesia as well as anterograde amnesia. Essentially, the accident wiped out her memories and prevented her from making new ones. Yet somehow she has stitched together an identity. Her first life began when she was born in 1965 and lasted until the spring of 1988, when the accident occurred. Everything after that consists of her second life, in which she depends on others to fill in the gaps with anecdotes about who I was, what I did, and how I lived. In this remarkable memoir, Meck chronicles her experiences as she learned to live in a house full of strangers. She discusses her marital troubles with great frankness as well as her frustration with herself, her family, and members of the medical community who did not take her injury seriously. Compelling and inspirational and, one hopes, an important impetus for ongoing brain research.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)