THE ANSWER TO THE RIDDLE IS ME : A MEMOIR OF AMNESIA
by David Stuart MacLean

Here's an interesting premise. This guy (the author) "wakes up" on a train platform in India having no idea where he is, how he got there, or who the heck he is.
A police officer takes him to a mental hospital where he has these hallucinations. His symptoms are caused by the anti-malarial drug Lariam that he has taken. He goes back to the States to figure out what his life was like before.
Sound intriguing? I thought so,too until I got further with the book. The more I read, the more he disgusted me. David Stuart MacLean is self-destructive. He is taking medication to counteract the effects of Lariam on him, but is drinking an exorbitant amount of alcohol which is not too smart with narcotics. At the same time, MacLean is smoking way too many cigarettes and he is an asthmatic. He writes about these two vices ad nauseam.
MacLean's writing is, at times, very good, but most times irritating. He uses way too many similes to "enhance" his prose. They're definitely not needed. You get the picture the first time you read the sentence. It's just endless filler.
I probably should have stopped reading the book early on but I stuck with it because I wanted to see what happened to him. By the end, I could care less.
Not recommended.
 

 

PHILOMENA : A MOTHER, HER SON, AND A FIFTY-YEAR SEARCH
by Martin Sixsmith

When you read the FOREWORD of this book (written by Dame Judi Dench), you think you're going to be swept up by this extraordinary story. Nothing is further from the truth. The fact that the film was taken from the book is crazy. I don't believe that Dame Judi Dench even read it. If she had, she would have been stunned.
The title is a sham. Philomena barely appears; just a little bit in Part One and even less in Part Four.  Most of what is in between is about Michael Hess and the excruciating details of his homosexuality and politics ad nauseum. It's enough to make anyone uncomfortable.
The book is poorly written and reads like a trashy novel. There is very sloppy editing, missing words, and misplaced punctuation. Many times I felt as if I should stop reading the thing because it became repetitious and boring. The characters are just not interesting to even care about. There are many dialogues and conversations and it turns out that author Martin Sixsmith made them up. Is this book even true?
What I do know is that it was a total waste of time.
Not recommended.