Review: Two Months by Gail Schimmel

One Thursday morning in February, Erica wakes up excited to see her friend Caitlin for lunch. However, when she spots her husband anxiously watching her from the foot of the bed, she’s understandably surprised. And when he informs her that it’s actually a Saturday in April, and she’s forgotten the last two months, she’s suitably shaken.

According to Kenneth, he and his wife had a car accident the day before, and she seems to have blocked out the last two months as a result. Sadly, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened – when Erica was a child, she blocked out two weeks of memories following a car crash. Maybe it’s her brain’s way of protecting her, or maybe there’s something fishy going on. As erica tries to recall everything she’s forgotten, she’s shocked to discover that not only has she lost the memories and the time, but she’s lost her job. The more she tries to recall, the more Kenneth insists that she rest and leave things be.

With Kenneth’s strange behaviour and reluctance to let her remember the last two months, Erica realizes that her husband has something to hide. Determined to get to the bottom of the whole mess, she plays amateur sleuth, only to discover that the events leading up to her memory loss were far worse than she could have ever imagined.

Two Months is an extraordinary book. Part whodunnit, and part hair-raising thriller, it’s loaded with enough tension, drama and suspense to guarantee you’ll have no fingernails left at the last page, but it’s so worth it. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes this book such a success – a brilliant story, catchy prose, or a unique narration style – together, the whole thing just works so well! There’s an unreliable narrator, and then there’s the amnesiac narrator of Two Months. The effect is truly unsettling, as the reader has no idea what is real, or who to trust. And it’s amid this aura of mystery and extreme tension that Gail Schimmel delivers a thriller that’s basically a punch to the gut. What’s not to love?

Two Months by Gail Schimmel is published by Pan Macmillan South Africa.