Never Never

“My mind is still in a haze. No, not a haze. Not even a dense fog. It feels as if I’m wandering around in a pitch-black room, searching for the light switch. I try to regain some semblance of familiarity from a face that should apparently be the most familiar to me. Nothing.”

Like the Silas and Charlie when they experience amnesia, the reader begins Never Never feeling lost. With its two first-person perspectives, the novel compels the reader to share the characters’ anxiety and terror at having forgotten who they are.

“She’s holding a sheet of paper. The sentence across the page reads, Never stop. Never forget. I drop the sheet of paper, wanting it out of my hands. ‘I don’t know what it means.’”

The phrase “Never Never” becomes a refrain in the novel. As the story explores the reality and importance of soul mates, the phrase comes to mean two different ideas: never forgetting the power of love and never taking it for granted.

“A gust of wind blows and the skirt and scarf move with it, but she remains unaffected. She doesn’t even blink. She’s lost in thought. I’m lost in her.”

Through mysterious amnesia loops, the novel allows Silas and Charlie to keep falling in love. Here, Silas experiences love at first sight, electrified by Charlie’s demeanor—this appreciation for the little things emerging as a strategy for keeping their love alive.