The Amnesia Clinic is a great novel by first time novelist James Scudmore. Set in Ecuador in the early eighties it is a coming of age story as well as a story of grief.
From the website:
“The Amnesia Clinic” is an extraordinary, powerful novel set in Quito, Ecuador. Anti, a quiet English boy, strikes up a friendship with flamboyant local classmate Fabian. Fabian is everything Anti isn’t: handsome, athletic and popular. What’s more, he lives with his cool, eccentric Uncle Suarez, while Anti is stuck in the dull ex-pat world inhabited by his parents. Suarez, a storyteller par excellence, infects the boys with his passion for outlandish tales, and before long, the relationship between them becomes one conducted entirely through the medium of storytelling. One subject is taboo: Fabian’s parents. But when details surrounding their disappearance begin to emerge, Anti decides to console his friend with a story suggesting that Fabian’s mother may be living at a bizarre hospital on the coast for patients with memory loss. With confused emotions and reality losing its tenuous grip, the boys embark on a quixotic voyage across Ecuador in search of an ‘Amnesia Clinic’ that may, or may not exist…
I fell in love in the book after Fabian’s uncle ends a story with this line: “Grief asks different questions of us all.”
I have contemplated this statement since I read it. It struck me deeply. Not long ago I told someone that I thought death was our greatest learning lesson. After pondering this question of grief. I think death may be the event and grief brings us all the lessons. I have never stopped learning from grief and it is my ultimate journey that only I can travel. Grief is a solitary ride.
For me, grief cuts thru any illusions I tell myself. When I stay present in the pain and truth I am powerful. When I deny the pain and turn my back to its demands I become un-centered and fragmented. Only by walking in my grief have I found my truth. Death and, ultimately, grief have become the journey to myself.
Grief is my ally and my enemy. Just when I think there is nothing else to learn another layer is exposed and reveals just how much further I have to go.
Grief asks different questions of us all. What does it ask of you?
[…] I got my reviews of two books posted finally. The Amensia Clinic and Finn both have stayed with […]
Interesting. How’d you heard of this?
This sounds so good. I’ve never heard of it. Is it a new book?
Thanks for the reviews, this one will end up on my Half.com wishlist, Finn will be a pass though.
This book called to me from the library bookshelf. I just grabbed it and am so glad that I did. It is new,out this year.
I kinda wished I passed on FInn as well. I have read a lot of books, lately, that have been predictable and decided to expand my reading. Finn is getting good reviews and there it sat all lonely at the library. I should have left it. I don’t remember Mark Twain as being this dark.