Changing My Mind

by Julian Barnes

First published 2025

Dr. Edward Marsden remembers everything—and nothing. After fifty years of precise surgical practice, his photographic memory begins to fragment. Strange gaps appear in his recollections: a critical operation from 1982, his wife's final months, entire stretches of professional achievement now blurred. When a former patient arrives with a medical malpractice claim that challenges his most treasured memories, Marsden must reconstruct his past from scattered fragments. His adult daughter, a neurological researcher, watches his cognitive unraveling with clinical detachment and growing alarm. As medical records contradict his remembered narrative, Marsden realizes that memory is not a reliable document—it's a living, malleable construct that can simultaneously protect and betray.

Genres: literary-fiction, medical, contemporary, psychological-thriller

Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking

Tropes: medical-mystery, unreliable-narrator

64 pages · Paperback · Notting Hill Editions

Content warnings: medical-trauma

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