Emma Tupper is a dedicated lawyer with a bright future. But, shattered by her mother’s death, she fulfills her dying wish by embarking on a month-long trip to Africa. There she falls ill, and spends six months trapped in a remote village thanks to a devastating earthquake. On her eventual return home Emma discovers that her friends, boyfriend, and colleagues thought she was dead and that life has moved on without her. As she struggles to recreate her old life, throwing herself into solving a big case for a client and trying to reclaim her beloved apartment from the handsome photographer who’s taken over her lease, everyone around her thinks she should take the opportunity to change. But is she willing to sacrifice the job, relationships and everything else she worked so hard to build?
Forgotten is the story of one young women’s life, broken down, reconstructed, and forever altered – a modern twist on the classic tale of discovering who we really are when everything that brings meaning to our lives is lost.
Comment: I've had this book in the pile for years, likely due to some recommendation or something, and now I've finally added it to my monthly lists, but the result wasn't as great as I hoped for.
Emma Tupper is a lawyer who is almost at the point of becoming partner, but sadly she looses her mother and one of her last wishes is for Emma to travel to Africa, since she had never been able to do the same. Emma agrees, at some expanse of her career, but nothing goes according to plan because while there, she becomes ill, left abandoned by her guides and on top of it there's an earthquake on the country and many are killed or missing, which includes Emma. For months, she could not contact anyone back home, in spite of the help of another British couple, and when the airport finally re opens, Emma is able to go back home, although her attempts at contacting her friends aren't successful. Everything becomes dire when she arrives and her apartment now belongs to someone else, and her car is gone. Everyone assumed she had died in Africa! What new life is waiting for Emma, then?
What an incredible premise, even if it's not as original as it seems to me! I was so eager to see how Emma would cope with the changes in her life, as well as how those around her would now react to the fact she is back and for six months all of those who knew her assumed she had died. Psychologically, this would certainly be the key element in this book, I thought!
Well, not really. I'm so sad over this because the story ended up being very dull and never really touched the things I wanted, such as how characters would now interact with Emma after going on with their lives thinking she was dead, especially her close friends and at work. These things were mentioned and we see some of it going on but it's all so superficially done and without real emotional impact. I felt I could be reading about anything else because no character had any depth.
Unfortunately for me, the writing was not very captivating and that obviously affected my lack of enjoyment. Besides, Emma is the protagonist and narrator of the story but to be honest, I never warmed up to her nor did I particularly feel she was someone to root for or to sympathize with, although she had gone through something that should have affected her a lot more than she let on. At first, I assumed, the point was to stress out how people react differently to trauma and that her apparent numbness would evolve to something else, but no. She remains aloof despite the things piling up around her.
At some point she talks to a police officer regarding some bureaucratic stuff and he advises her to seek a psychologist to deal with this whole thing, if only to help her with dealing with those who thought she had died, for certainly they would not be the same people she left, but even such a key scenes led nowhere! Nothing really happens to make an impact on the story. I think the author used this tactic a lot, declarations or advises given which might lead to some important moment, and then nothing.
It is also hinted at that Emma will use this situation to think about her life and what she wants for the future. I feel this didn't really developed as is assumed, because she doesn't really change much in her life, and is even able to get her old job back, more or less. What lesson did Emma learn? I think the changes in her life were all easily sequenced and dealt with in ways that didn't really cause a difference in her way of thinking and of living. Sure, we see scenes in which things change for her, but not in ways I feel such a premise might led to, somehow.