My Memories of a Future Life [Paperback]

Roz Morris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 2011

'Spellbinding... a hypnotic experience'

'I was hooked - grabbed immediately'

'Beautiful, simple, evocative'

'Absolutely gripping'

'Don't plan to read just a few pages'

'A strange and stubborn book, visual and visceral, original and odd... will stay with you long after finishing its final pages' - For Books' Sake

If you were somebody’s past life...

What echoes would you leave in their soul?
Could they be the answers you need now?

It’s a question Carol never expected to face. She’s a gifted musician who needs nothing more than her piano and certainly doesn’t believe she’s lived before. But forced by injury to stop playing, she fears her life may be over. Enter her soulmate Andreq: healer, liar, fraud and loyal friend. Is he her future incarnation or a psychological figment? And can his story help her discover how to live now?

A novel in the tradition of The Time Traveller’s Wife, Vertigo and The Gargoyle, My Memories of a Future Life is much more than a 'who was I' tale. It is a multi-layered story of souls on conjoined journeys – in real time and across the centuries. It’s a provocative study of the shadows we don’t know are driving our lives, from our own pasts and from the people with us right now. An examination of what we believe, what we create and how we scare and heal each other. Above all, it's the story of how one lost soul must search for where she now belongs.


'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?’

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Roz Morris lives in London. She is a writer, journalist, fiction editor and the author of Nail Your Novel – Why Writers Abandon Books and How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish With Confidence. She also has a secret identity as a ghostwriter, and is the author of eight bestsellers under other names.

My Memories of a Future Life is her first novel writing as herself.

Product Details

• Paperback: 366 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (September 18, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1463784902
• ISBN-13: 978-1463784904
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,156,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Roz Morris lives in London. From the earliest age she had a compulsion to express herself on the page. Let out of London university, she was soon working as a journalist and writing novels. You'll have seen her books on the bestseller lists but not under her name because she ghostwrote them for other people. She is now coming into the daylight with novels of her own. She is represented by Piers Blofeld at Sheil Land and by Jane Conway-Gordon.

Her first novel under her own name is My Memories of a Future Life. She is also the author of a writing series, Nail Your Novel.

If you want to get to know her a little better, drop in at www.rozmorris.wordpress.com and her blog www.nailyournovel.com - where she keeps a regular diary of challenges she's tackling in her writing.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I need to talk to someone about this book April 18, 2012

By Build another bookcase

Format:Paperback

Last night my wife went off to her local book club and I was so jealous. Not for the normal reason, that her book club is in a pub and I was missing a few pints. No, because she was going to have a chance to discuss with a peer group the book they had all read. I had just finished reading Roz Morris's novel and it has left my head in a spin, with no pub full of cronies to help out.

As a musician, author and reader of literary fiction myself, this book was potentially right up my street. I know the author is a ghost writer and her blog posts are usually along the theme of music in fiction or writing advice. But what if it was crap? What if it was over-stuffed with in-your-face musical references and a writing style like a paint-by-numbers exercise?

I needn't have worried. From the first few pages I was in comfort. Then I began to experience discomfort. Not with the prose or undeniable musical influence, but a shared discomfort with the protagonist as she battled with a debilitating, lifestyle threatening malady. As the literary themes developed it became difficult to put the book (well, ebook, I read it on my kindle) down.

The main themes that came across to me in this book were threefold: how much a life can be impacted by devotion to a single pastime or occupation; the draw of mysticism and the subtle line between belief and cynicism; and the trust that we place in others through relationships.

Being a multi-tasker myself when it comes to hobbies and occupations, I often envy those who can dedicate themselves to one particular pursuit. They achieve a level of immersion and eventual expertise that unavoidably places the 'amateur' label on others less devoted. Morris exemplifies this very well in the character of Carol, yet her very way of life is under threat as the problem with her hands begins to marginalise Carol from her own society.

The overt chicanery of the hypnotist Anthony Morrish contrasts well with Carol's therapeutic experiences of Gene, and the other-worldly setting of Vellonoweth adds sinister elements reminiscent of The League of Gentlemen and The Prisoner. This balance between intrigue, mild terror and charlatanism is perfectly maintained throughout.

Carol's friendship with Jerry is a cornerstone of her life. The Gene thing is dysfunctional but Carol clearly yearns for that excitement. Both she and Gene are pretty screwed up compared to 'normal' people. She's very reluctant to give herself, he's an enigma and the whole thing goes on above a buried nuclear power station.

Metaphors abound in this story. The reader is regularly invited to take things on face value, push them away as fake or adopt a Zen approach to the Andreq future life and Vellonoweth shenanigans.

Morris presents the whole like a crossroads where each and any direction can make sense. My Memories of a Future Life is a wondrous book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling Literary & Musical Mystery January 23, 2012

By Tessa Tangent

Format:Paperback

My Memories of a Future Life by Roz Morris

Last to read I'm almost certain, there are reasons I've reviewed this book when my only other review on this new blog of mine was for the same author. That is because I read Roz Morris's Nail Your Novel http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nail-Your-Novel-Writers-Confidence/dp/146108136X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327336345&sr=1-1 and it enabled me to begin a second draft of my novel when I was about to give up and never bother writing again. So, if there is a slight bias, it is justified. I am paying my debt to the woman who passed her knowledge on to me. But no way would I have said what I said if it was a crap novel. Nor would I have bought it in paperback. So....

From the moment 'Memories' opens in a yoga studio, where candles 'knew the truth' and which were `shivering to an influence none of us could hear or feel', I was drawn into Roz Morris's narrative. What is it we can't hear or feel, apart from subterranean trains? As surely as Carol, her heroine hypnotee, was drawn into her future life regressions (or were they progressions?), I found it difficult to stop reading. Dinners went uncooked, dog unwalked.

Carol Lear, a concert-level pianist with RSI in her hands, is at a painful crossroads in her life. She becomes reliant upon recorded hypnosis sessions - the tapes of which have chapters to themselves - with the cold, yet mesmerising, Gene Winter in which she becomes the spirit of the flawed future healer, Andreq. Gene, who stubs out cigarettes with his bare feet among other party-pieces, entices her to the village of Vellanoweth to house-and-cat-sit for a female colleague and to work in her place as the music shop's singing teacher.

Working and living in Vellanoweth enables her to continue her progression sessions with the nocturnal Gene Winter, be perplexed by some of the locals, visit the country's first nuclear power-station, and check out the weather-reliant local radio station. There appears to be a religious -v- spiritualist divide in the village, and in the nearby town of Ixendon. Quite who is friend or foe among this bunch of musicians, doctors, esoterics or the religious is a mystery, yet Carol is eventually accused of being `unfit to have custody of spirit' at a time when she is questioning what is going to become of her own spirit, in the present day.

Characters drawn particularly well were Jerry, Eleanor Lear (hilarious keyboard-thumper, certain Carol is one of the family), and bow-tie'd Richard Longborrow. Carol grew on me eventually when I saw her doing the same kinds of things, and making the same kinds of mistakes, that any of us might. Gene and Willa, I'll leave you to decide for yourself.

Having read, and been very well guided by, Roz Morris's useful book for writers, Nail Your Novel, I admit I was curious to see how Roz practices her own system. With `Memories' she demonstrates her own methods very well, keeping the narrative tight with almost every scene a chapter, which suited my narrow attention-span. The movement towards a satisfying conclusion for the reader was well-paced. Her use of original metaphor (`the muted piano, like bells tolling underwater') helped me in revising my own writing. I began to worry I don't use metaphor nearly enough.

Once I'd put the book down, I had to let it clarify in my head for a week. My husband enjoyed a cooked dinner, the dog was walked, and order restored. The book had many themes for me: of truth and of what truth is; of the `talented soul' and what lies behind that talent; of deceit and how we can deceive ourselves; of how the troubled can be unable to make the wisest life decisions; about freedom to choose; about personal restriction and about power. The power of the universe, the power we allow others to hold over us and the power that lies within us. And, of course, the possibility that, at some time in the future, we'll be xeching away all over the place, under the sea.

Read it - it's unusual, intriguing and ultimately satisfying, even with all those 'Yes, but what...' questions which arose as soon as I closed the book and sat there looking at the front cover. While my husband said 'What's for dinner?' There are many questions in life that will go unanswered. I shall probably die puzzled...

Call me biased if you like: I don't care. I loved this book!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The end is an absolute rip-roarer September 24, 2011

By Matt Kelland

Format:Kindle Edition

I almost feel like I should be doing a proper literary criticism, of the sort I haven't done since school: Synopsis, Themes, Characters, Style, Symbolism, Summary. That's because this feels like a proper bit of "literature". That's a word I use with some trepidation: usually "literature" means "stuff I feel like I ought to have read but probably won't actually enjoy" - whether it's modern lit or classic lit. And don't get me started on "chick lit". This isn't one of those bits of "literature", though. It's intelligent, thoughtful, and heavily character-based, yes, but it's also very easy to read and it's got a damn good story. That's because most of Roz's books are very different. She's written under a number of well-known names, including [REDACTED] and [CAN'T TELL YOU OR I'D HAVE TO KILL YOU], and she knows how to tell a rattling good yarn. She's not your usual literary novelist.

One of her other readers summed it up best - Memories is like John Fowles's The Magus. I loved that book when I was a teenager, and I'm now getting a hankering to read it again. It's the sort of literature I enjoy reading, combining a slightly unsettling plot with hints of more beyond. It's not the depressing realism of your typical Booker novelist or the light fluffiness of a slice of middle class city life.

Memories is about a pianist who can't play any more who goes to a hypnotist and starts channelling, not a past life, but a future life. Anything more would be a spoiler, so I'll stop right there. Roz's writing is some of the sharpest I've read in a while. She uses short, punchy sentences, punctuated by powerful metaphors and vivid descriptions. The result is some of the most readable prose I've come across in a while.

I read this in four parts as it came out, and I will admit that after the first episode, I was slightly dubious about where it was going. I was enjoying it, but once she introduced characters who were regressing to past lives involving Jack the Ripper, there was a small part of me inwardly groaning and hoping it wasn't going to turn into some cheesy From Hell scenario. By the end of the second episode, I still wasn't much reassured. But I'm glad I stuck with it, because the end is an absolute rip-roarer. (Her husband Dave popped up on Twitter when I mentioned my concerns, and assured me I wouldn't anticipate the end. He was right. I should have known Roz wouldn't resort to cliche without good reason. She's better than that.)

I enjoyed this immensely. I'm torn between 4 and 5 stars, but that's only because I'm really, really picky when it comes to giving out 5-star ratings, and I'd have enjoyed it more without the enforced breaks in the middle. However, it's an easy four and a half. Memories is sharp, well-written, and a damn good read, and I'm looking forward to whatever Roz does next.