The Story of Forgetting » (Bargain)

Stefan Merrill Block was born in 1982 and grew up in Plano, Texas. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2004. "The Story of Forgetting" is his first novel. He lives in Brooklyn.

In Stefan Merrill Blocks extraordinary debut, three narratives intertwine to create a story that is by turns funny, smart, introspective, and revelatory.

The Barnes & Noble Review

"In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a function as recollecting," the psychologist and philosopher William James has written. James meant that we need to be able to select out important detail from irrelevant, lest our minds be cluttered with useless information. In a more general sense, we consider a certain amount of amnesia a necessary and productive thing. Who can move forward if they are mired in the past, nursing old wounds and focusing on their failures? In his brilliantly audacious debut novel, Stefan Merrill Block imagines characters on opposite ends of this spectrum -- some crippled by their inability to forget, others entering into the childlike bliss of unknowing, because they suffer from a rare disease known as early-onset Alzheimer s.