Before I Go to Sleep

Christine wakes in a strange bed beside a man she does not recognise. In the bathroom she finds a photograph of him taped to the mirror, and beneath it the words ‘Your husband’.

Each day, Christine wakes knowing nothing of her life. Each night, her mind erases the day. But before she goes to sleep, she will recover fragments from her past, flashbacks to the accident that damaged her, and then—mercifully—she will forget.

Chilling, exquisitely crafted and compulsively readable, S. J. Watson’s debut novel Before I Go to Sleep is a psychological thriller of the highest order. It asks primary questions. Are there things best not remembered? Who are we if we do not know our own history? How do we love without memory?

See what Channel 10’s The Circle Bookclub thought of Before I Go to Sleep.

Read about what inspired S. J. Watson or his response to Booktopia’s Ten Terrifying Questions.

Listen to interviews with Stuart Beaton or Ramona Koval (ABC Radio National’s The Book Show).

Listen to S. J. Watson on ABC Conversations with Richard Fidler, discussing how he came to write Before I Go to Sleep.

Praise for Before I Go to Sleep:

An exceptional thriller. It left my nerves jangling for hours after I finished the last page.

Dennis Lehane

The best debut novel I have ever read.

Tess Gerritsen

A deft, perceptive exploration of a fascinating neurological condition, and a cracking good thriller.

Lionel Shriver

Before I Go To Sleep is a tour de force, a haunting tapestry woven from a single woman’s ragged thoughts.

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