'Genius story ... characters you won't want to leave behind … full of suspense and enigma'
If your life might be another person's past... What do they know of you?
Could they have the answers you need now?
Carol is a gifted pianist who has never needed anything but her talent – until an untreatable injury stops her playing. Terrified that it might end her career, she moves to a village on the coast to convalesce and teach singing. She becomes beguiled by glimpses of her next life – a healer called Andreq. Is he really what he seems to be? Does his life have any clues that can help her now?
A duet between land and sea, past and future, trance and waking, My Memories of a Future Life shimmers with mystery and questions. It’s a novel about clairvoyants and charlatans, the all-consuming dedication of the professional musician, the shadows that shape us, the yearning for a soul-mate, the tyranny of small towns, and what we do when we lose the thing that gives us our identity.
‘I have had to wrestle with monsters of professional jealousy to review this book. It is SO good.’
‘Reminded me of Doris Lessing--though Morris is much more readable.’
‘Fresh, unpredictable; I was entirely engaged and convinced.'
'Echoes of Atwood's 'Blind Assassin.'
‘Distinct voice reminded me of Atwood's Handmaid's Tale.’
‘Like Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black, which also explores the murky lives of charlatans.'
'A first-class page-turner.’
‘I was reminded of Iain Banks; London is a gritty, grave place, where to step off the treadmill can leave one on the outside.’
‘Reminded me at first of The Time Traveller's wife; strong imagery and layers of story within a story. However it grew into something quite different.’
‘Gave me the creepy feeling of Rosemary's Baby or the Wicker Man’
‘Like John Fowles's The Magus ... an unsettling plot with hints of more beyond.’
‘Like Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland, but uses its double narrative in a more straightforward fashion (which I appreciate).’
‘Reminds me of the canny cultural observations of Barbara Pym or Penelope Fitzgerald. Prepare to be surprised, mystified, and sorry it ends.’
‘Not easily categorised. Should I call it a literary novel? Science Fiction? Romance? You could make a case for any one.’
‘Excellent. Will read it again soon.’
'I was always fascinated by tales of regression to past lives,' says the author Roz Morris. ‘I thought, what if instead of going to the past, someone went to a future life? Who would do that? Why? What would they find?
‘Another longtime interest was the world of the classical musician. Musical scores are exacting and dictatorial - you play a note for perhaps a sixth of a second and not only that, there are instructions for how to feel - expressivo, amoroso. It's as if you don't play a piece of classical music; you channel the spirit of the composer.
‘I became fascinated by a character who routinely opened her entire soul to the most emotional communications of classical composers. And I thought, what if she couldn’t do it any more? And then, what if I threw her together with someone who could trap the part of her that responded so completely to music?’
My Memories of a Future Life is a new addition to the great tradition of the 'who was I' tale for readers of Cloud Atlas, Somewhere In Time, Vertigo, Lady of Hay and The Blind Assassin.
