What do you think?
Rate this book
How to Forget
Do you hold on to your memories? Or do they hold on to you?
Magicov the Magnificent, grand illusionist, earns his living entertaining the geriatrics of Lotus House Care Home. But Mr Magicov (also known as Peter) envies them - they've mastered a trick that eludes him. They can forget .
Peter yearns to forget. But memories haunt the shameful moment an eight-year-old wrecked his life; the FBI agent who hunted him like a dog; that suitcase stuffed with a million pounds. More than anything Peter wants to forget Kate, the expert con woman. The one he loved and left.
For renowned bain-scientist Dr Chris Tavasligh, Peter's craving to escape makes him the perfect candidate for a bold experiment in changing minds - forever. Faced with such an opportunity, will Peter go through with it? And if he does, who will he become?
Magicov the Magnificent, grand illusionist, earns his living entertaining the geriatrics of Lotus House Care Home. But Mr Magicov (also known as Peter) envies them - they've mastered a trick that eludes him. They can forget .
Peter yearns to forget. But memories haunt the shameful moment an eight-year-old wrecked his life; the FBI agent who hunted him like a dog; that suitcase stuffed with a million pounds. More than anything Peter wants to forget Kate, the expert con woman. The one he loved and left.
For renowned bain-scientist Dr Chris Tavasligh, Peter's craving to escape makes him the perfect candidate for a bold experiment in changing minds - forever. Faced with such an opportunity, will Peter go through with it? And if he does, who will he become?
- GenresFiction
512 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2011
5 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
About the author
Marius Brill
3 books9 followersMarius Brill attended St John's College, Oxford, after a career as a doorman, journalist and prize-winning playwright at the Soho Theatre. The script of his film, Diary of a Surreal Killer, was nominated for a BAFTA Carl Foreman award. His comic radio series, sLaughter in the Dark, played to critical acclaim on Radio Four. Making Love: A Conspiracy of the Heart is his first book.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 19, 2023
Subtitled 'A Book Of Laughter And Forgetting', this is an interesting mix of farce, faux-science, crime caper and romantic comedy! Well the main characters are a magician on the sex-offenders register, an FBI most wanted grifter and a TV celebrity specialising in talking to the dead! A highly praised piece of dark comedic fiction (by its readers) that I also enjoyed. 6 out of 12, solid Three Star excursion.
2012 read
2012 read
July 21, 2011
You’ve got to stay alert while reading How to Forget; ironically, you also need a good memory, because there’s a multitude of twists and turns, sudden changes of direction, shifting identities and aliases as you follow the clever, crude and utterly compelling tale of poor Peter, aka Mr Magicov, entertainer to the elderly, whose life was ruined in a disastrous and hilarious child molestation case, orchestrated by the monstrous Titus, now a celebrity illusionist in the Derren Brown mould.
The story follows Peter’s struggles to forget his agonising past and make a new life, a struggle pushed to dizzy new heights (and very much against Peter’s will), by self-obsessed con-artist Kate, on the run from her own nemesis, the obsessive and sociopathically vicious FBI Agent Brown. I don’t think it gives too much away to say the tale ends with a delicious double twist in which practically everyone gets their just deserts.
The 'academic' inserts seemed a tad intrusive, interrupting, as they did, an otherwise fast-moving, page-turning narrative. I feel they would have worked better if they could have been somehow woven into the story, rather than as ever-more distracting ‘case-notes’. I did find myself skimming them a little, as the plot became ever more compelling.
How to Forget is a terrific story with brilliantly worked characters and an intelligent, fast-moving plot. One of the best novels I’ve read this year and very highly recommended indeed.
The story follows Peter’s struggles to forget his agonising past and make a new life, a struggle pushed to dizzy new heights (and very much against Peter’s will), by self-obsessed con-artist Kate, on the run from her own nemesis, the obsessive and sociopathically vicious FBI Agent Brown. I don’t think it gives too much away to say the tale ends with a delicious double twist in which practically everyone gets their just deserts.
The 'academic' inserts seemed a tad intrusive, interrupting, as they did, an otherwise fast-moving, page-turning narrative. I feel they would have worked better if they could have been somehow woven into the story, rather than as ever-more distracting ‘case-notes’. I did find myself skimming them a little, as the plot became ever more compelling.
How to Forget is a terrific story with brilliantly worked characters and an intelligent, fast-moving plot. One of the best novels I’ve read this year and very highly recommended indeed.
October 12, 2019
A rollicking tale of magic, memory games and con tricks, told in a pacey jokey style that effectively prevents any belief that any of this could be real. I didn't care about any of the characters. I actually have no idea why I bought this one as it's not normally the kind of thing I read. Others may fare better - it is clever and the second half does draw you in a bit - but I can't recommend it.
May 25, 2013
brilliant.
April 24, 2019
This is not a book into which you should dip in and out and I will admit that I made a couple of false starts before I finally got into the story. Then once I had the wind in my sails, I rather enjoyed it. But it’s fair to say that the word ‘unconventional’ could be applied to this novel.
The approach is unusual and we are introduced to the mystery of a missing doctor – a controversial memory specialist by the name of Dr Chris Tavasligh. Tavasligh has some rather unsavoury theories about the treatment of the elderly and those with dementia which lead the readers to ask themselves some uncomfortable questions, particularly “Which is worse, the loss of your memory or the process of losing it?” It’s thought-provoking stuff. Throughout the book, we are exposed to Tavasligh’s theories, sections of the doctor’s notebooks, and access to the design of some of the experiments carried out. However, despite these parts being the skeleton on which the story is hung, I couldn’t help but think that removing the whole darned lot wouldn’t actually have damaged the story very much.
Marius Brill is clearly a very clever chap and How to Forget displays that very well. At times the poor reader could be forgiven for confusing ‘clever’ with ‘smug’ but most of the time we’re working so hard just trying to follow what’s going on and trying to work out what this book is trying to be. Is it a love story? It might be. Is it a mystery or suspense thriller? Sometimes that might also be true. It is complex, sometimes quite hard to follow, and when I got to the end I had the sense of reaching the end of a major endeavour as well as the satisfaction of reaching a point where the previous 390 pages kind of knitted together and made sense.
We have characters who have forgotten and characters who want to forget; people who have played so many roles that they barely recall who they really are and others who know exactly who and what they are but don’t plan on letting anyone else in on their secrets. In addition to the mysterious doctor we have an elderly but once great magician living out his final years in a care home, a middle-aged magician hiding away from the art he loves after a rather unfortunate incident at a children’s birthday party, a once-beautiful con-artist who fears the fading of her looks and final big scam, a professional stage ‘medium’ who knows rather too much about the recently deceased, and his evil investigators who are a pair of cartoon-like Hassidic Jews who seem unlikely to be the ideal undercover men. And then there’s an overweight FBI man determined to catch the woman who has run rings around him for decades.
Peter is the younger magician, known also by his stage name of ‘Magicov the Magnificent’ though there’s not so much magnificence to be found doing card tricks in the old people’s home. He wants to forget the incident that got him his unjustified listing on the sex offenders register almost ask much as he wants to forget Kate, the woman who broke his heart. Meanwhile, Kate is bouncing around the world evading her FBI nemesis who will not let himself retire until he catches the one that got away. She’s posing as a Hispanic maid in the USA in one chapter and then popping up a few chapters later to try to steal the farm and inheritance of a young naive farmer. Meanwhile, the boy who destroyed Peter’s life had grown up to become Titus the medium and has developed extraordinary ways to astonish his audience. After all, if you can go through the list of ticket holders for your up-coming show and find one with an elderly relative who might feasibly die just after revealing all their secrets to you, that’s going to make for an amazing stage show. Killing relatives in order to provide audience satisfaction is at least guaranteed to ensure authenticity.
The characters buzz around, orbiting each others lives until the whole lot end up intertwined just in time for an astonishing ending. It is – as I mentioned earlier – clever stuff. The problem – if there is one – is that the characters are mostly so unlikeable (though I would exclude the lovely Peter from that statement) that it’s hard to know what to believe and what to reject. Undoubtedly that’s what Brill wants us to feel and he does it really well. But how can we as readers relax if we’re never offered any kind of certainty to hang onto?
I found the book complex, puzzling and eventually rather satisfying – but the satisfaction was the type that comes from solving a cryptic crossword or an ultra-hard Sudoko. I was satisfied and I had been challenged by the book but I cannot really say that I really ‘enjoyed’ it. One thing is for sure though – it was far from forgettable.
The approach is unusual and we are introduced to the mystery of a missing doctor – a controversial memory specialist by the name of Dr Chris Tavasligh. Tavasligh has some rather unsavoury theories about the treatment of the elderly and those with dementia which lead the readers to ask themselves some uncomfortable questions, particularly “Which is worse, the loss of your memory or the process of losing it?” It’s thought-provoking stuff. Throughout the book, we are exposed to Tavasligh’s theories, sections of the doctor’s notebooks, and access to the design of some of the experiments carried out. However, despite these parts being the skeleton on which the story is hung, I couldn’t help but think that removing the whole darned lot wouldn’t actually have damaged the story very much.
Marius Brill is clearly a very clever chap and How to Forget displays that very well. At times the poor reader could be forgiven for confusing ‘clever’ with ‘smug’ but most of the time we’re working so hard just trying to follow what’s going on and trying to work out what this book is trying to be. Is it a love story? It might be. Is it a mystery or suspense thriller? Sometimes that might also be true. It is complex, sometimes quite hard to follow, and when I got to the end I had the sense of reaching the end of a major endeavour as well as the satisfaction of reaching a point where the previous 390 pages kind of knitted together and made sense.
We have characters who have forgotten and characters who want to forget; people who have played so many roles that they barely recall who they really are and others who know exactly who and what they are but don’t plan on letting anyone else in on their secrets. In addition to the mysterious doctor we have an elderly but once great magician living out his final years in a care home, a middle-aged magician hiding away from the art he loves after a rather unfortunate incident at a children’s birthday party, a once-beautiful con-artist who fears the fading of her looks and final big scam, a professional stage ‘medium’ who knows rather too much about the recently deceased, and his evil investigators who are a pair of cartoon-like Hassidic Jews who seem unlikely to be the ideal undercover men. And then there’s an overweight FBI man determined to catch the woman who has run rings around him for decades.
Peter is the younger magician, known also by his stage name of ‘Magicov the Magnificent’ though there’s not so much magnificence to be found doing card tricks in the old people’s home. He wants to forget the incident that got him his unjustified listing on the sex offenders register almost ask much as he wants to forget Kate, the woman who broke his heart. Meanwhile, Kate is bouncing around the world evading her FBI nemesis who will not let himself retire until he catches the one that got away. She’s posing as a Hispanic maid in the USA in one chapter and then popping up a few chapters later to try to steal the farm and inheritance of a young naive farmer. Meanwhile, the boy who destroyed Peter’s life had grown up to become Titus the medium and has developed extraordinary ways to astonish his audience. After all, if you can go through the list of ticket holders for your up-coming show and find one with an elderly relative who might feasibly die just after revealing all their secrets to you, that’s going to make for an amazing stage show. Killing relatives in order to provide audience satisfaction is at least guaranteed to ensure authenticity.
The characters buzz around, orbiting each others lives until the whole lot end up intertwined just in time for an astonishing ending. It is – as I mentioned earlier – clever stuff. The problem – if there is one – is that the characters are mostly so unlikeable (though I would exclude the lovely Peter from that statement) that it’s hard to know what to believe and what to reject. Undoubtedly that’s what Brill wants us to feel and he does it really well. But how can we as readers relax if we’re never offered any kind of certainty to hang onto?
I found the book complex, puzzling and eventually rather satisfying – but the satisfaction was the type that comes from solving a cryptic crossword or an ultra-hard Sudoko. I was satisfied and I had been challenged by the book but I cannot really say that I really ‘enjoyed’ it. One thing is for sure though – it was far from forgettable.
February 5, 2021
Kate, a con-woman magician’s daughter teams up with Peter, a stumbling Mr Magicov; humiliated and falsely accused 15 years ago at a child’s birthday party, now ready to take revenge on his unknowing nemesis who has become a mind-reading TV superstar. With plenty of allusions and illusions and written as a quasi-scientific report, there is much about cons and sleight-of-hand with an author who uses language to comic effect but it didn’t hang together as it ventured towards a thriller-type ending played out far too long. 2.5 stars for me.
November 4, 2011
Magician Peter Ruchio was humiliated, and his career derailed, by a prank played by Titus Black at the latter’s eighth birthday party; fifteen years later, Black has grown up to be a famous illusionist (though he is not above committing murder to preserve his secrets), whilst Peter is performing tricks in restaurants and old people’s homes. A chance encounter with Kate Minola, a grifter on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, gives Peter the opportunity to take his revenge on Black; but his experiences ultimately lead Peter to seek the help of Dr Chris Tavasligh, a neuroscientist working on a way to ‘reboot’ the human brain, thereby erasing all memories. That was three years ago, and Tavasligh subsequently disappeared; the book in our hands purports to be the scientist’s collected papers.
As befits a novel about a magician, How to Forget is full of misdirection; one is never quite sure which way the characters will turn, who can be trusted – and there’s a sense at the end that the real story is not the one we thought it was (the allusions to The Taming of the Shrew in the protagonists’ names serve, as far as I can tell, to highlight the idea of a story within a story). Not everything in the book works so well: the larger-than-life tone and occasional comic interludes tend to rub against the more serious episodes, rather than working with them; and it seems to me that Brill’s material on memory doesn’t quite integrate successfully with the plot. Better is the author’s comparison of Peter’s and Kate’s professions, which leads them to face up to some difficult questions; and the caper narrative has all the page-turning tension and momentum one could wish.
As befits a novel about a magician, How to Forget is full of misdirection; one is never quite sure which way the characters will turn, who can be trusted – and there’s a sense at the end that the real story is not the one we thought it was (the allusions to The Taming of the Shrew in the protagonists’ names serve, as far as I can tell, to highlight the idea of a story within a story). Not everything in the book works so well: the larger-than-life tone and occasional comic interludes tend to rub against the more serious episodes, rather than working with them; and it seems to me that Brill’s material on memory doesn’t quite integrate successfully with the plot. Better is the author’s comparison of Peter’s and Kate’s professions, which leads them to face up to some difficult questions; and the caper narrative has all the page-turning tension and momentum one could wish.
March 6, 2012
This is a book about a magician and a con-artist as written by a brain-scientist. The magician gets tangled into a con-artist scam and so ends up on the run from the authorities in a particularly thrilling chase. The brain scientist is trying to help the magician forget about his old life and start a new one, one with no recollections of his past, and this novel is his way of recording the magician's past.
So it's not your normal book what with the outline above, the many twists and turns within the plot and it's story being organised around various academic articles on memory and how the brain works.
Indeed I have to say these articles did somewhat get in the way of the main narrative and could have been edited out but it sort of added to the authenticity of the author being an expert in the field of thoughts so I can understand why they are there. That aside the book was a cracking read with a really good story which always left me guessing as to where it would go next. It was a very clever plot full of humorous metaphors and excellent repartee.
So it's not your normal book what with the outline above, the many twists and turns within the plot and it's story being organised around various academic articles on memory and how the brain works.
Indeed I have to say these articles did somewhat get in the way of the main narrative and could have been edited out but it sort of added to the authenticity of the author being an expert in the field of thoughts so I can understand why they are there. That aside the book was a cracking read with a really good story which always left me guessing as to where it would go next. It was a very clever plot full of humorous metaphors and excellent repartee.
February 10, 2016
A very clever book. Very well written and researched with interesting theories throughout. If you like psychology, light crime or magic, I would recommend this book. The only thing preventing it from the full 5 stars is how it kept jumping from character to character and time to time. A very enjoyable read.
August 22, 2014
It felt confused to me neither thriller, rom com or medical journal about the brain. I enjoyed the insight into magic and working a con but that's about it
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews