Dr. Lloyd Copeland is an arrogant but brilliant neurologist. A womanizer on the brink of a major medical development that will change the pharmaceutical landscape forever, his equally important goal is preserving his own sanity. Dementia has taken the dignity of the men in his family, even driving his father to suicide. Driven to change his own destiny, his lack of social skills is tolerated largely because of his potential to heal. An inexplicable glitch in his protocol coincides with a medical review panel and suddenly, his life’s work is in jeopardy.
On the panel is Erin Kennedy, a woman he knew casually as a child. She is now a medical ethicist and his downfall in more ways than one. He overlooks the part she played in halting his research and allows her into his life, drawn to the memories she evokes of a better time. The narrative turns largely into a romance novel for a time, which seems disingenuous for how focused and intense Copeland was described as to this point.
While the reader can (frustratingly) see a clear conspiracy unfolding in the hospital, Copeland turns a blind eye and obsesses on this new relationship with a scheming and generally abrasive woman. The medical suspense and treachery are there, the main character just chooses not to see it as his whole life spirals downward and his family is nearly lost.
The romance between Copeland and Kennedy, who clearly has an agenda of her own, is a larger part of the narrative than would be expected in this genre. For a character, a respected doctor nonetheless, who is so driven to keep his memory, it’s disturbing how quickly he forgets everything that always mattered to him. Right when almost all is lost, an experience with a patient puts his priorities in order. Copeland is driven to take drastic measures in a last ditch effort to salvage his memory and life.
THE ART OF FORGETTING takes a somewhat unexpected path to impart the lesson that the risks and responsibilities that come with choosing to remember will always far outweigh the false freedom of forgetting.
Reviewed by Kat Toland for IndieReader