Christopher
Priest’s 1981 The Affirmation is a
novel that superbly outlays the all-too-human manner in which we stifle the
world—repress reality—to keep life warm and charming, no ugly burrs or bumps to
spoil the vision. But what of the past,
our memories of times good and bad? Are
these also malleable facets of existence and not the concrete recollections we
would have them be? In sideways-brain
fashion, Priest’s 1984 The Glamour continues
the author’s interrogation of perception by tackling precisely this question.
We
first meet Richard Grey convalescing in a rural English hospital. One of the victims of a bomb attack at a
police station, multiple injuries binding him to a wheelchair, he is slowly
recovering to mobility. Memory likewise
unstable, he remembers nothing in the handful of weeks prior to the attack, and
as a result is undergoing therapy with the hospital’s psychologist and
psychiatrist. Receiving a major surprise
one day, he is introduced to a woman named Susan who claims to have been his
girlfriend in that blank space of memory.
Her face triggering no memories, Grey places upon himself the task of
getting to know her as well as he can in the hopes it will to revive the
time. He gets much more than he asked
for.
