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Amnesia Nights
SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG WITH JOHN WRIGHT.
His mind is playing tricks on him. He sees people he thinks he knows, but they’re only strangers. His memory flickers in and out of focus. What he does know is He hasn’t seen his fiancée, Iris, in over three years. He fled their Los Angeles apartment one night after a fit of rage that may or may not have left her dead. He’s been living off a small fortune he stole from Iris’s wealthy, manipulative father. He keeps it hidden behind the wall of his Minneapolis bedroom. He bides his time and waits for the police to find him and charge him with his lover’s murder—though he isn’t sure if he killed her, or if she’s really dead.
Iris was his anchor, the one joy in his troubled life. At Harvard, she transformed John from a shy and awkward freshman into an elegant, self-assured man. But now she’s gone, and his memories of her are obscured by a miasma of guilt and uncertainty.
Then one bright day Iris returns. But is she real, or just a cruel figment of his addled brain? Only a journey into the deepest corners of his past will reveal the truth about John and Iris—about life and death and love, and secrets too dark to reveal.
His mind is playing tricks on him. He sees people he thinks he knows, but they’re only strangers. His memory flickers in and out of focus. What he does know is He hasn’t seen his fiancée, Iris, in over three years. He fled their Los Angeles apartment one night after a fit of rage that may or may not have left her dead. He’s been living off a small fortune he stole from Iris’s wealthy, manipulative father. He keeps it hidden behind the wall of his Minneapolis bedroom. He bides his time and waits for the police to find him and charge him with his lover’s murder—though he isn’t sure if he killed her, or if she’s really dead.
Iris was his anchor, the one joy in his troubled life. At Harvard, she transformed John from a shy and awkward freshman into an elegant, self-assured man. But now she’s gone, and his memories of her are obscured by a miasma of guilt and uncertainty.
Then one bright day Iris returns. But is she real, or just a cruel figment of his addled brain? Only a journey into the deepest corners of his past will reveal the truth about John and Iris—about life and death and love, and secrets too dark to reveal.
304 pages, Paperback
First published June 29, 2004
25 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 21, 2009
By local author Quinton Skinner, I read this book for my bookclub and found that I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would (having never heard of it before). The author weaves together a story set in Minneapolis and Boston and really draws you in to the characters. I found myself really wondering what was going to happen - which is always fun!
October 2, 2018
A beautiful, haunting book about the mysteries of memory, violence, identity, and love. The Uptown Minneapolis setting is a special treat for Minnesota readers, though the story spans both coasts and has universal appeal. A spooky, spectral, shining tale, with rich humanity and b
May 14, 2019
"Memory is not a block of concrete. It has warmth and comfort, but little shape. It's as fragile as a single old photograph. It's here, then gone again. It's a handful of wind. Should time collapse, and everything happen at once, then the tragedy of life disappears. For change is what we take for tragedy, the loss of what once was, the conditions that can never be duplicated." Quinton Skinner
I read this book twice, out of the need to revisit it after turning the final page the first time. Those who have felt the love for someone that Jack and Iris feel for each other—a sense of new understanding and a new level of communication reached just by looking into one another's eyes—know that Jack's actions, while extreme, aren't outside of the imaginable. Romantic love is a kind of possession. It makes you into someone you didn't know you could be in good ways, and, in cases where that possession makes you possessive, in bad ways, too. Early passionate love is love without limits, and without experience. We perceive more and more things, innocuous or justified, as a threat to that love. We become dependent on it. We express rage when we feel it's being jeopardized. And with time, maybe even without our realizing it, we push it away. The very acts to preserve "how it was" are those that punctuate that chapter in our lives. Why? We cannot hold love captive or go back to how things were originally, not even in memory (even memory shifts). We must let loving relationships live and evolve with time, as we too will. Following bitterness of betrayal, amnesia to a formative youth, violence, tears, and loss, I think Jack comes to understand this, whether he and Iris are together or not.
Skinner's novel had me at times rolling with laughter (every exchange with Solomon Ford), gripped with suspense (the dialogues with Iris's father, the reckless drive on a rescue mission through a downpour on the winding Pacific Coast Highway), and nostalgic for first love. It is wonderfully written, and easily substitutes whatever else you had to do that day. Read it.
I read this book twice, out of the need to revisit it after turning the final page the first time. Those who have felt the love for someone that Jack and Iris feel for each other—a sense of new understanding and a new level of communication reached just by looking into one another's eyes—know that Jack's actions, while extreme, aren't outside of the imaginable. Romantic love is a kind of possession. It makes you into someone you didn't know you could be in good ways, and, in cases where that possession makes you possessive, in bad ways, too. Early passionate love is love without limits, and without experience. We perceive more and more things, innocuous or justified, as a threat to that love. We become dependent on it. We express rage when we feel it's being jeopardized. And with time, maybe even without our realizing it, we push it away. The very acts to preserve "how it was" are those that punctuate that chapter in our lives. Why? We cannot hold love captive or go back to how things were originally, not even in memory (even memory shifts). We must let loving relationships live and evolve with time, as we too will. Following bitterness of betrayal, amnesia to a formative youth, violence, tears, and loss, I think Jack comes to understand this, whether he and Iris are together or not.
Skinner's novel had me at times rolling with laughter (every exchange with Solomon Ford), gripped with suspense (the dialogues with Iris's father, the reckless drive on a rescue mission through a downpour on the winding Pacific Coast Highway), and nostalgic for first love. It is wonderfully written, and easily substitutes whatever else you had to do that day. Read it.
October 31, 2018
Haunting.
This is one of those stories that has an almost tactile grit to it. I kept turning pages until I ran out. I'll be picking up the next one Skinner writes as well.
This is one of those stories that has an almost tactile grit to it. I kept turning pages until I ran out. I'll be picking up the next one Skinner writes as well.
October 5, 2025
Spoilers:
Not the best well written book but also from 2004. I always look for definitive endings and this was the opposite so that’s where my rating comes from. Disappointed in the ending but it’s my preference style.
Spoiler-ish: Was really hoping to have all that build up be the result of him being a patient at the assisted living and everyone in the book were orderlies helping him remember what he had done to Iris. Or Iris had done what he remembers doing and she was never there but he was seeing her because he was the one with brain damage. Without knowing where the Iris’s father or Frank was at the end and the improbable way Iris ends up in a transient house I give it 2 stars.
Not the best well written book but also from 2004. I always look for definitive endings and this was the opposite so that’s where my rating comes from. Disappointed in the ending but it’s my preference style.
Spoiler-ish: Was really hoping to have all that build up be the result of him being a patient at the assisted living and everyone in the book were orderlies helping him remember what he had done to Iris. Or Iris had done what he remembers doing and she was never there but he was seeing her because he was the one with brain damage. Without knowing where the Iris’s father or Frank was at the end and the improbable way Iris ends up in a transient house I give it 2 stars.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews