Review Tuesday: Lapses of Memory by M.S. Spencer - #romance #travel #ReviewTuesday

Lapses of Memory by M.S. Spencer

The Wild Rose Press, 2017

Sydney Bellek meets Elian Davies for the first time in the nineteen-fifties. She’s five years old, he’s seven, and their respective families are en route to Paris and beyond, flying on the magnificent state-of-the-art Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. Though she feels a strong connection with the older child, he quickly slips from her memory. When she encounters him again, first when she’s a teen in Gibraltar, then as a student of Arabic in Cairo, she senses something familiar about his startling blue eyes, russet hair and stubborn cowlick, but she doesn’t recognize him. Their lives run in parallel as both become foreign journalists, covering the world’s conflicts and crises, and competing for the top stories. Time after time, Elian drifts in and out of Sydney’s life, almost like a ghost. Each meeting is marked by a paradoxical level of comfort, given that Sydney believes them to be strangers, as well as by the intense flare of physical attraction. Before Sydney can figure out who he is or what this means, however, Elian’s gone.

Then fate throws them together in a perilous situation. They are captured by one of the factions in the Lebanese civil war. Sydney escapes unharmed, but Elian disappears and is believed dead. As she mourns, Sydney begins to understand who Elian really is – her true soul mate, as well as the father of her unborn child. For years she searches without success for her lost lover. When she finally finds him, he insists he has no recollection of her, or of his former identity. After her own repeated memory lapses, Sydney struggles to enlighten Elian about their shared past and to secure their hoped-for future.

I bought this book after reading the author’s blog post about its origins (thus confirming that sometimes, at least, blogging is an effective marketing tool!) According to the post, many of the scenes and events in Lapses of Memory, particularly the journeys on multiple generations of aircraft, are based on M.S. Spencer’s own life experiences. An enthusiastic traveler myself, I was eager to read a book that promised visits to Paris, Cairo, Beirut and other exotic locales.

I found myself enmeshed in a novel with a far more ambitious and complex structure than is typical for romance. Lapses of Memory shifts smoothly back and forth between the present and the past, as Sydney narrates the story of her relationship with Elian to their now-adult daughter, Olivia. Olivia, a romance author by profession, is writing Sydney’s biography, but she’s not exactly an unbiased observer. M.S. Spencer does an excellent job conveying both the affection between mother and daughter and the mutual unease that characterizes their journey into Sydney’s very personal history.

The author’s prose is vivid and I enjoyed the glimpses she provides of different locales and cultures, though these were not as extensive as I had hoped. I did find the premise of the tale a bit implausible. Then I thought about how poorly I recall some of the people from my early years (I am almost exactly Sydney’s age), and wondered whether in fact the core plot notion was as crazy as it first seemed.

Overall, I liked this book, but two aspects bothered me. First, I found the ending somewhat dishonest. Throughout the novel, Sydney and Olivia speak and act as if Elian had passed away at some point after he and Sydney finally married. It was a shock to me to discover this was not the case. I rather wonder about the author’s intentions in this regard, or whether I seriously misread the interactions between mother and daughter.

My second criticism relates to the erotic content. As an erotic romance author myself, I know the depth and intensity an explicit love scene can bring to a story. M.S. Spencer’s sex scenes, however, gave me the distinct impression that the author is not comfortable writing about the details of sex. Her word choices and descriptive style struck me as awkward, uneven and strained. Unlike the polished prose in the rest of the book, these scenes felt amateurish and embarrassed. It’s as if someone told M.S. Spencer ,“Well, you’ve got to put in the sex, because that’s what readers want these days”, and she forced herself to do this, even when this wasn’t natural for her.

In fact, Lapses of Memory would have worked perfectly well if the sex had been more nuanced and less graphic, and I suspect the author herself would have been far more comfortable. Though Sydney’s and Elian’s connection expresses itself in intense physical attraction, it’s fundamentally a spiritual bond. We expect them to become lovers – we don’t need to see every step in that process.

In summary, Lapses of Memory delivered on its promise of taking me to far-off lands, as well as offering an original and engaging love story. I’m glad I gave in to my impulse.