Book Review: The Woman Who Can't Forget

The Woman Who Can't Forget, by Jill Price
The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science

What would it be like to live with a memory so powerful that it dominates one's waking life?

Inside book cover:

"Jill Price has the first diagnosed case of a memory condition called "hyperthymestic syndrome"--the continuous, automatic, autobiographical recall of every day of her life since she was fourteen. Give her any date from that year on, and she can almost instantly tell you what day of the week it was, what she did on that day, and any major world event or cultural happening that took place, as long as she heard about it on that day. Her memories are like scenes from home movies, constantly playing in her head, backward and forward, through the years, not only does she make no effort to call her memories to mind, she cannot stop them."

This book was fascinating. I had never pondered, in my own life, why I remember some things and forget others. This woman remembered most things from the time she was two, but by age fourteen she remembered EVERYTHING. This was a plague and a curse.

For months after her mother was diagnosed with cancer, Jill was consumed with every single solitary unkind thing she had ever said or done to her mother. This preoccupation with reliving every bad thing almost made her come unglued, her life was a mess.

Actually, Jill's life was quite unsuccessful, on the whole, because she could not get past her childhood memories of being afraid of childhood phantoms, and could recall every fear and insecurity that little children have. She lived with her parents until she was thirty, even though she had a job, she could not move on with her life.

Another interesting thing about Jill was that even though she carried all these memories in her head, she still felt the need to write a daily diary. But she would only write in it sporadically. Once a year or every other year she would get a diary and then mentally go over every single day and write down the whole year or two years from memory. I think that is really bizarre.

p. 127

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?" --Vita Sackville-West, Twelve Days

p. 181

"Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in the case of memory its utility is obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing." --William James, one of the founders of psychology.

Interesting book. I would not want to be her.