The Answer to the Riddle Is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia

"A deeply moving account of amnesia that . . . reminds us how we are all always trying to find a version of ourselves that we can live with." --Los Angeles Times On October 17, 2002, David MacLean "woke up" on a train platform in India with no idea who he was or why he was there. No money. No passport. No identity. Taken to a mental hospital by the police, MacLean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. He could remember song lyrics, but not his family, his friends, or the woman he was told he loved. The illness, it turned out, was the result of a commonly prescribed antimalarial medication he had been taking. Upon his return to the United States, he struggled to piece together the fragments of his former life. In this "mesmerizing, unsettling memoir about the ever-echoing nature of identity--written in vivid, blooming detail," he tells the harrowing, absurd, and unforgettable story of his journey back to himself (Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl). "[MacLean] is an exceedingly entertaining psychotic. . . . [A] raw, honest and beautiful memoir." --The New York Times "If bad things are going to happen, we are lucky when they happen to someone with the wit, humanity and sweetness--to say nothing of an eye for detail and a gift for pacing--that MacLean brings to this wrenching tale. . . . Readers who flip open the book will find MacLean, preserved between pages, goofy and serious, lost and found." --Chicago Tribune "[MacLean] writes eloquently about the bizarre and disturbing experience of having his sense of self erased and then reconstructed from scratch." --The New Yorker

About the Author :
David Stuart MacLean is a PEN/America Center award-winning writer. His work has appeared in Ploughshares and on the radio program This American Life. MacLean has a PhD from the University of Houston and is a cofounder of the Poison Pen Reading Series. He lives in Chicago with his wife.

Review :
"As harrowing as this territory is, Mr. MacLean makes an affable, sure-footed guide. . . . Thanks to his raw, honest and beautiful memoir, readers will already have a clear idea what his experience was like. We can be grateful Mr. MacLean has remembered so much, and so well." --The New York Times "[A] vivid reflection on the 10 years following the Lariam-induced break with reality and the memory problems that persisted in its wake. . . . One author, a writer by trade, tells his story because it is a good one: dramatic and unique. The other tells a story, no less arresting, because she has a point to make. Both succeed impressively." --The New York Times Book Review "Written in terse, vivid prose spiked with blackouts and violent hallucinations reminiscent of a Ken Kesey classic, MacLean's story of the yearlong quest to regain his life reads like fiction, and reminds us that while memories may be painful, truth is all too often elusive." --Mother Jones "Incandescent . . . MacLean's account is raw and unsparing, and will surely take you out of your comfort zone--the reader is immersed in the writer's oblivion and his vertiginous journey of recovery--but the reward for sticking with it is the privilege of reading MacLean's profound and finely nuanced meditation on memory and identity." --The Seattle Times "MacLean fearlessly explores his journey to the edge of madness and his subsequent return to sanity in an unsettling, sometimes riotous, memoir." --Publishers Weekly "Mesmerizing." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Riveting, sad, and funny . . . Both a sharply written autobiography and an insightful meditation on how much our memories define our identities." --Booklist "A gripping medical mystery, a heartwarming personal journey, and a chilling indictment of the commonly prescribed drug that upended MacLean's life--but left his superb literary skills intact." --Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks