In this spellbinding and provocative novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Miracles, a young mother is struck by sudden and puzzling psychological symptoms that illuminate the mysterious dimensions of the human mind—and of love.
A year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. Three days after her first visit to a psychiatrist, Jane suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.
Are Jane’s strange experiences the result of being overwhelmed by motherhood, or are they manifestations of a long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago and who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever deeper into the farthest reaches of her mind and cause him to question everything he thinks he knows about so-called reality—including events in his own life.
Karen Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is both a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate and a mesmerizing literary puzzle about the bonds of love—between mother and child, between a man and a woman, and among those we’ve lost but who may still be among us.
Don't just take our word for it...
“A brilliant and unforgettable novel, at once a metaphysical thriller, a psychological mystery, and a profound love story—a book for every haunted heart. I couldn’t put it down.”
– Karen Russell, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Swamplandia!
“An astonishing novel—a mind-blowing blend of page-turning mystery and deep philosophical inquiry into the nature of memory and reality itself . . . Karen Thompson Walker has created an unputdownable book (I read it in a single day) with a haunting twist ending I’ll be thinking about for a long time. I’m in awe.”
– Angie Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Happiness Falls
“In her brilliant and mesmerizing new novel, Karen Thompson Walker asks thrilling and vital questions about perception, memory, consciousness, and the limits of our known world. Elegant, propulsive, ingeniously structured, and intellectually rich, The Strange Case of Jane O. is both mind-bending and soul-altering. I loved it.”
– Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers
Taste the very first page
Jane O. came to my office for the first time in the spring of that year. She was thirty-eight years old. Her medical history contained nothing unusual. This was her first visit, she said, to a psychiatrist.
She spoke softly, as if concerned about being overheard. She did not remove her coat.
She didn’t say why she had come, and she had left much of her paperwork blank.
But a silence can be useful. I have learned to let one bloom.
And so we sat for a while without speaking, in my small office on West Ninety-sixth Street, while the city thrummed around us.
Jane sat very still on the couch. She kept her arms crossed. Minutes passed.
There was a time when I would have found it awkward, to sit so long in silence with another human being, but I’ve grown used to it over the years, the way other doctors do to the nakedness of the body.
She wore a gray sweater and tortoiseshell glasses. She was pale, and she was slim. Very little makeup, or none. A simple gold bracelet encircled one wrist. No rings.
“I’m sorry,” she said, finally. “It’s just hard to explain.”
I noticed then that the skin around her fingernails was red and…
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