The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science
by Jill Price with Bart Davis
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 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.
The Woman Who Can't Forget is the beautifully written and moving story of Jill's quest to come to terms with her extraordinary memory, living with a condition that no one understood, including her, until the scientific team who studied her finally charted the extraordinary terrain of her abilities. Her fascinating journey speaks volumes about the delicate dance of remembering and forgetting in all of our lives and the many mysteries about how our memories shape us.
As we learn of Jill's struggles first to realize how unusual her memory is and then to contend, as she grows up, with the unique challenges of not being able to forget - remembering both the good times and the bad, the joyous and the devastating, in such vivid and insistent detail - the way her memory works is contrasted to a wealth of discoveries about the workings of normal human memory and normal human forgetting. Intriguing light is shed on the vital role of what's called "motivated forgetting"; as well as theories about childhood amnesia, the loss of memory for the first two to three years of our lives; the emotional content of memories; and the way in which autobiographical memories are normally crafted into an ever-evolving and empowering life story.
"Not all the details of Price's life are so compelling, but her insights into the nature of memory, forgetting and the formation of our sense of self will resonate with a wide audience." - Publishers Weekly.
"The chronicle of her adult life, unfortunately, is told in stiff, repetitive prose that leaches out much of her story's impact ... Price's story is intriguing, but ultimately fails to shed light on a little-understood subject." - Kirkus Reviews.
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