Book Review: A STRANGER COMES TO TOWN

Title: A Stranger Comes to Town

Author: Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Publisher: EastOver Press

Pages: 205

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

Joe Marzino, the name in his wallet, wakes up in the hospital after an accident, so he’s told, a stranger to himself. He can’t remember a single thing about himself. A beautiful woman called Norah says she is his wife. They have three children: 16yo Vincent, 9yo Kevin and 4½yo Luz.  

Norah tells him that he is an actor, playing a private eye. As she brings him up to speed on his past, he learns good and bad things about himself. Gradually he comes to know of several things that he has done in the past. Things that are shady and wrong, things he cannot imagine himself doing in the past.

And the evidence seems to be mounting. A rumour about a classmate who has the leading role in a college play that Joe wanted himself. Letting his sister take the blame for his own wrongdoing. Forcing himself on a teenager. Joe cannot reconcile the best of who he believes he is with the worst of what others have told him about himself.

Are they true, these horrible things he is told he did in the past? Joe likes to think that he is a reasonably good guy. Could he have done the bad things—and they are really bad—that he is supposed to have done? Will he ever get to the truth about himself?

 

The book is written in the first-person PoV of Joe.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

The book is packed with information about amnesia, including films on the subject which Joe remembers. It forces us to mull over our sense of self, and the mystery of who we might be, if the past were obliterated for us.

 

Interestingly, Joe is not a completely clean slate. He can identify places and accents, just not himself.

 

It was interesting to see him second-guess himself, every line a new thought as he attempted to suss out his memories. The constant thinking, not quite stream of consciousness, but steady, slowly frames his sense of self.

 

There is an element of mystery as he attempts to figure out who he is, and how he can be the husband and father he is, as also play the other roles he must play.

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

Joe has an opportunity to re-invent himself, to redeem himself, but he doesn’t take it. This was an example of a character naturally assuming for himself a negative arc. Or more correctly, falling back to the same rhythms his life once held.

 

ALL SAID AND DONE:

I couldn’t figure out the point of the book towards the end. Joe gets some memories back, but the core of who he is does not change. He slips back into the same behaviour patterns.

 

The book ended on a vague, inconclusive note. I couldn’t decide what to make of it. 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)