The Wrong Reflection

by Gillian Bradshaw

Paul Anderson has no memory of working for Stellar Research, except flashes from a secret-and terrifying-project that threatens to tear his sanity apart...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Historical Fiction

368 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 10, 2000

About the author

Born in Arlington, Virgina, Gillian Bradshaw grew up in Washington, Santiago, Chile and Michigan. She is a Classics graduate from Newnham College, Cambridge, and published her first novel, Hawk of May, just before her final term. A highly acclaimed historical novelist, Gillian Bradshaw has won the Hopwood Award for Fiction, among other prizes. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and their four children.

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent read by Bradshaw, but one I was not really taken by. The story starts with Sandra, our lead protagonist, driving home when she spots a car that looks to have driven through a crash barrier and plunged into a stream. Sandra goes to investigate and finds a man in the car, covered in blood. She manages to get him out of the car before it sinks and, using almost forgotten CPR techniques, gets his heart to start beating and breathing once again. The next day or so she visits him at the hospital and while awake, the man is suffering from total amnesia. He is identified via his wallet and employer, Stellar enterprises, an alternative energy firm in England (this is set in England BTW). Yet, the man does not think he is the man called Paul Anderson...

Amnesia stories are pretty cliche, but Sandra starting to fall in love with the man whose life she saved really pushes it over the limit for my tastes. I should mention that Sandra is a gorgeous redhead from Scotland here. It quickly becomes obvious that Paul (or not-Paul) is not simply an amnesia victim and we are left with two basic options: not-Paul's consciousness was somehow transplanted into Paul or not-Paul is someone made to look like Paul and then killed (but this was botched by Sandra). Things start to get interesting when the CEO of Stellar (Philip) takes a personal interest in not-Paul and wants him to convalesce at a spa/resort/health club (the Oaks) owned by Stellar, but not-Paul is sure he does not want to go there, and is very suspicious of the CEO in any case; he remembers little, but of this he is sure. There is also an investigative journalist who barges into the scene as he has been hot on Stellar's case about some corporate misdoings and a lot of what he has found concerns Paul (now not-Paul)...

On the one hand, this reads like a thriller, albeit at a slower pace than most as we are introduced to the main character's lives and intrigues. Sandra's love of not-Paul seems to be reciprocated so we have that fledgling romance as well. Then things start to get out of hand with Stellar when they basically kidnap not-Paul right in front of Sandra and crew at the Stellar headquarters during the pretext of an interview. What is going on?

To say much more about the plot involves spoilers, so I will stop here. Baradshaw's workmanlike prose is fine, but the entire amnesia/romance just did not do it for me. worse, it turns out that not-Paul is actually an alien, an energy being who had never assumed a biological form before, nor had he experienced emotions; everything is as logical as a Vulcan. How does such a being 'fall in love' in the first place? I thought this really was pretty silly and unnecessary Decent pacing, the final denouement was, however, not really unexpected and all the various plot strands were resolved cleanly; maybe too cleanly. Another thing besides cliches that bothered me a bit concerned all the PC secondary characters. We really have villains here with Stellar, but our band of heroes is just a little too pure as well. Gimme some gray! 2.5 stars rounding down.

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man pulled from a car wreck and revived through CPR awakens in hospital to find he cannot remember anything about himself - or much of anything . . . except for the fact that he violently resists the fact that he is the person identified by the hospital through the papers on him and in the wreckage of the car, and that he is terribly afraid of the company he supposedly worked for, and the people with whom he supposedly worked. He looks like the person they claim he is, he has the same identifying marks, he even shares the same fingerprints, but he is absolutely certain that he is not this person. The only one who believes him at first is the woman who rescued him.

Gillian Bradshaw brings these characters, especially the main character, to life in a way that I haven't seen in a long time - I was fascinated and unable to put this book down until I reached the ending. At first it read like a mystery/thriller, but as the book progresses, it very gradually (and, in my opinion, in a realistic manner) enters the realm of science fiction. The more technical elements are explained in a manner that I found easy to understand and added to the story.

This was a wonderful book and I highly recommend it to anyone who can get their hands on it. I hope that it will be re-released at some point, if enough people discover it.

[Lissa Notreallywolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wrong Reflection is a wonderful book about the joys of being embodied, and how seductive our sensory experiences: the scent of popcorn at the beach, bird watching, etc. Bradshaw does her usual marvelous job of character development through small personal touches, This is the first novel I am aware of where she has strayed from historical fiction, although the story has many components of the life of Tesla, set in modern Britain. It begins with amnesia, wends its way through a murder mystery and is triumphantly science fiction by the end. Spoiler Alert: Corporate greed threatens to deprive the world of something like a perpetual motion machine introduced by an energetic and very charming life form who found its self embodied. When the alien realized that the corporate aims were not in his interests, or the parameters of his initial experiment, it took over a fresh corpse, much to the disgust and misunderstanding of humans. By the end of the book I was in love with the alien and "his" scientist companion, and the caretaker.

[Reesha · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful and well written story. I just couldn't put it down, reading from cover to cover until after midnight on a work night. Then I couldn't sleep afterward because I just lay awake thinking about it until 3AM. It was that good!

The main characters were realized, flawed, and likable. The plot was just pure fun from beginning to end.

If I had any complaint, it would be that some of the attitudes briefly mentioned in the book seemed considerably older than the year 2000 (the copyright date of the book), the villain(s) could be a bit one-dimensional at times (especially as the ending approached), a few of the supporting characters could have been better realized, and the woman lead could have had at least one conversation with another woman that wasn't about her man.

These are really slight complaints that aren't worth the loss of a star (maybe 1/2 a star at most), because the story itself was fully realized and the writing style grabbed me from page one and carried me through all 284 pages without stopping for anything but a bite to eat. Which I ate while reading more.

I really loved it!

[Evan Þ. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gillian Bradshaw's modern thriller writing turns this time to sci-fi! Our protagonist rescues a man dying in a car crash, to discover that he's got full amnesia. He's connected with a mysterious advanced research firm - and what's more, seems to feel threatened by them, for what reason he can't remember.

Our protagonist feels called to help him figure out who he is and why he's scared of this firm. Romance feels about to blossom - but I'm glad that plot line stays in the background this time, firmly behind the quest of what's going on at that firm and who our protagonist is.

Oh, did I mention the aliens?

This isn't my favorite book of Bradshaw's, or even my favorite modern thriller about aliens, but it's decently good, and fun.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story of a man rescued from a car accident who has amnesia but is certain he isn’t the person they say he is. There will be no surprising shocks in the plot for people who have read similar stories in the past, but the writing is well done and the protagonists are likeable, and I cared very much what would happen to these people. I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I’ll just say that one sentence from one character moved this from four to five stars for me.

[Kathryn McConaughy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A surprisingly solid SF novel from the maven of historical drama. I love the voice of not-Paul-Anderson.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded down for ultimately being a basic thriller, despite some interesting ideas. A good read nevertheless.

[Kelsie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book started off promising but then just went down hill very quickly. It was overly detailed on the unimportant things, the characters were as dull as dishwater and I actually skimmed read the last 150 pages as well as skipped a page here and there and I still didn't miss anything important.
It was just filled with unnecessary expositions which was just mumbo jumbo half the time. Not only that, half the dialogue gave me second-embarrassment. I couldn't picture people saying half the crap they said in this book.
It was just a mess and I really wish I hadn't bothered reading this in the first place. Do not recommend.
x

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wrong Reflection
by Gillian Bradshaw

Going through my old paperback and reviewing before I recycle them, I found this gem. Some excellent descriptions from the main character told in a third person past tense narrative. Overall, better than I remembered.

A nice SF thriller with a twist I didn’t see coming (at least at the time). Some small amount of romance but mostly a mystery and a thriller with SF elements.


Sandra Murray chances upon a car accident one night and rescues a man with CPR.

When he wakes up in the hospital, they tells him that his name is Paul Anderson. He insists that it is not, but can’t actually remember who he is. Everyone keeps insisting that he is, his photo matches, people who know Paul Anderson insist that he is Paul Anderson.

The author does an excellent job of describing his visceral experiences from the time that he wakes up. Very well done. Also on re-reading, there are many clues. Besides his missing identity, he seems to not know many basics about life in general.

Sandra comes to see him when he is in the hospital and takes an interest in his mystery when he confesses to her that he strongly feels he isn’t Paul even though all the evidence indicates that he is. When he goes home, he hires Malcolm Brown to help care for him. Sylvia and Malcolm spend time with him and try to jog his memory.

As he meets with colleagues (who definitely think he is Anderson) he discovers more about the man who he was supposed to be and none of it feels right to him.

Together, they slowly unravel mysteries and conspiracies surrounding Anderson’s life and the company he worked for. Through it all he nearly remembers things but constantly pulls back from some sort of pain and trauma. There are hints that some at Stellar Research know exactly what is going on but they are not saying. The amnesiac surrounds himself with people who didn’t know him before and he feels he can trust.

About half way through they admit (several bad guys at Stellar Research) they know he isn’t Anderson and imprison him at the lab and in fact want to know what he did with the man. They quickly discover that he just doesn’t know. But it is at this point in the novel that it is very clear that ‘Not-Anderson’ as he is often called is not just someone else but some thing else. And we finally learn ‘his’ name is Wave Vector and whatever he is, Stellar Research has another of his kind (named Gravitational Constant) held prisoner.

While they torture Wave Vector, we learn that he communicated with them and gave them formula’s to build an energy source of some kind. They also debate if Paul is still alive (the body being Paul Anderson’s). While this is going on, “Anderson’s” friends desperately try to get to him, first ineffectively going to the police.

Most of the Stellar Research crowd want to get Paul back, while the lead bad guy Sir Phillip seems to enjoy torturing the creature in possession of his body. Anderson is definitively dead, but Wave Vector doesn’t want to admit that. Eventually, they assume it anyway and accuse it of killing Anderson to take his body.

With Sandra Murray and a reporter making noise to try to find her amnesiac, Sir Philip has no choice but to bring her in on the secret. He tells her everything starting with how the energy being contacted him and gave him a new theory with mathematical formulas that could solve the world’s energy needs. He put together a research team and built a prototype. Sir Philip then admits to building a trap for the creature because it had ‘turned on him’ but it escaped and killed Paul Anderson and took his body.

Sir Phillip hopes to win them over but the plan backfires and they are revolted by his torture of Wave Vector. They are unable to get to him and have to back off momentarily.

Wave Vector succeeds in escaping on his own and Sandra finds him and takes him into hiding. In hiding he tells his friends (Sandra, Malcolm and Rod) his version of the story including the details of Paul’s death and how he only took over after Sandra started resuscitating him.

After a day of rest and recuperating Wave Vector insists he must go back to rescue Gravitational Constant. They succeed but are captured by Sir Philip in the process. Paul Anderson’s body is killed and Wave Vector must flee before his death causes and explosion killing them all.

He does come back and say good bye via computer conversation before departing form Earth forever.

[Marsha Valance · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this superbly realized treatment of first contact, an amnesiac flees from a corporation he suspects of trying to destroy him.

[melydia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul Anderson wakes from a coma having forgotten everything except the firm conviction that he is not Paul Anderson, and that he is inexplicably terrified of the people from Stellar Research, where he is employed. With the help of the woman who saved him from the car accident that nearly killed him and the young man providing in-home medical care, he works to unravel his past and discover his true identity while dodging a skeezy documentary maker as well as his employer. Since this is a science fiction book, I probably should have figured out the twist earlier, but it was still an interesting concept. I thought the characters were fairly three-dimensional, even if some of the cultural diversity felt a bit shoehorned in. I probably won't go out of my way to pick up any more of Bradshaw's books, but this one was a decent diversion.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading the blurb, I expected one thing; reading the book, I discovered something entirely different.

What I liked best about the book was that it was a great story where the information unfolded gradually and so well. I wanted to keep reading to find out how everything ended.

On the other hand, there was a lot of head-hopping where I could see what was going on inside each of the characters' heads within the same scene. It was done very well, and didn't make me uncomfortable to read, but not many books are written in this way these days, and I have to say that I prefer to have a close point of view with any viewpoint characters in a scene.

Great story, and I'll keep an eye out for other books by this writer.

[Debbie Gascoyne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This started out very well, and built a great sense of mystery and intrigue, but just went Kerthunk somewhere in the middle, around the time of the Big Reveal. There was a curiously dated feel to the story - more like something written in the 1950's than 2003. It's not BAD, but not really all that good either; I couldn't recommend it.

[Marjorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a Sci-Fi novel which starts off feeling like a detetive story and which challenges expectations about what makes us human, and who we should really be afraid of.

This is no Space Opera - it is a complex and thought provoking novel which happens to be sci-fi!

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This sci-fi adventure was mediocre. It started out pretty good but at some point got bogged down in action and technical details that were unimportant to me.

[Tracings · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting "alien encounter" novel.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this but I like her historical fiction more.