Reviews beyond Amazon

This remarkable novel reminded me of The End of Mr. Y and Our Tragic Universe, by Scarlett Thomas. (Thomas is one of my Top Shelf Authors = I Want To Write Like That When I Grow Up.)

An unusual blend of the esoteric and the practical, the book follows a pianist diagnosed with RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury). Carol’s safe place, Carol’s home, is in front of her piano. But her curious condition locks her out. An accidental encounter with an old acquaintance peels back various layers of memory, truth and trust, revealing rather more than she expects. Both reader and narrator are left with more questions than answers, but plenty to think about. And Carol discovers the strength to face life away from a keyboard.

As a sufferer of RSI, I sympathised with the narrator and her frustration at being unable to express herself in her own art form. But most of all I was seriously impressed by a writer of such skill and confidence. She dances between plausible reality and the shadowy realm of interpretation, underpinned by evident intelligence. A real corker, in fact.

From Critical Mass:

The theme of reincarnation is not among my favorites, either in fantasy or in horror. I’m not sure why that is, probably because the mechanism seems totally random and implausible, but I have no problem with other random and sometimes implausible speculations. Given the existence of reincarnation, however, we have some interesting situations for exploring human character and it’s not surprising that most reincarnation novels are very much involved with psychology rather than overt action, which is the case here as well. The author turns the idea on its head a bit here. The protagonist doesn’t remember a past life, she recognizes that she is the past life of something who has yet to be born. The novel is almost entirely inner directed, as the protagonist suffers an injury which prevents her from playing the music that is the focus of her life, forcing her to seek new anchors for her thoughts and ambitions. An ambitious and mostly enthralling novel that reminded me at times of Robert Silverberg’s Dying Inside. 1022/11

From Awfully Big Reviews:‘

I have had to wrestle with monsters of professional jealousy to review this book. It is SO good. Even the premise is one of those striking ideas that seems so beautiful and right, even obvious, but that you know you would never have thought of yourself: – if, by hypnosis, you can be regressed into a past life, could you be progressed to a future life? My immediate response was: Wish I’d thought of that! But I didn’t. Roz Morris did… from the first page the prose is sheer pleasure…’ (Read the full review)

From For Books’ Sake:

‘Cinematic, unusual and at times uneasy, My Memories of a Future Life is the story of what happens when Carol is diagnosed with RSI and told she cannot play piano for at least the next six months, a decision that sees her questioning an identity that had until then been linked intrinsically with her piano playing…’ Read the full review