In her book I Forgot to Remember, Su Meck describes life after a severe head injury that left her with no memories of her life before the age of 22. Laura Miller praises the book, calling it “unnervingly honest, straightforward to a degree that makes every other memoir I’ve read seem evasive, self-conscious and preening”:
It is utterly free of signs that Meck wants her reader to think of the book in a particular way or to view her as a certain type of person. It’s a story told without a moral or the urging to take away any pat life lesson (beyond the realization that a loved one who’s been hit on the head might be more affected by it than he or she seems). Indeed, it makes sense that someone like Meck, whose grip on her own identity is hard-won, would care so implacably about telling the truth, even when that truth makes it difficult to leave a good impression.
This extraordinary quality becomes all the more marked as “I Forgot to Remember” unfolds and Su learns that neither [her husband] Jim nor her own past is what she’s been told. Her accounts of the intimate life of her marriage take on an arresting, even brutal forthrightness: “I have always loved Jim, and I have never loved Jim. In a way, Jim was assigned to me. I never really had a say, which sounds incredibly cruel, but that’s essentially the way it is.” And then later, “I can’t say that I love Jim in the conventional sense that most married couples love each other. I have no idea what it feels like to ‘fall in love’ with another person. I seriously doubt I will ever fall in love, and I am totally okay with that.”
The Dish 