Author | S. J. Watson |
---|---|
Cover artist | Veronique Beranger / Getty Images |
Language | English |
Genre | Thriller, Suspense |
Publisher | Doubleday (United Kingdom) HarperCollins (United States) |
Publication date | April 2011 (United Kingdom) June 2011 (United States) |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print, audiobook, ebook |
Pages | 368 |
ISBN | 0-85752-017-2 |
Followed by | Second Life |
Before I Go to Sleep is the first novel by S. J. Watson, published in the spring of 2011. It became both a Sunday Times and The New York Times bestseller [1] and has been translated into over 40 languages, [2] and has become a bestseller in France, Canada, Bulgaria and the Netherlands. [3] It reached number 7 on the US bestseller list, the highest position for a debut novel by a British author since J. K. Rowling. The New York Times described the author as an "out-of-nowhere literary sensation". [4] He wrote the novel between shifts whilst working as a National Health Service (NHS) audiologist. [5]
The novel is a psychological thriller about a woman suffering from anterograde amnesia. [6] She wakes up every day with no knowledge of who she is and the novel follows her as she tries to reconstruct her memories from a journal she has been keeping. She learns that she has been seeing a doctor who is helping her to recover her memory, that her name is Christine Lucas, that she is 47 years old and married and has a son. As her journal grows it casts doubts on the truth behind this knowledge as she determines to discover who she really is. [3]
According to Book Marks , the book received "rave" reviews based on 6 critic reviews with 5 being "rave" and 1 being "positive". [7]
Ridley Scott acquired the film rights and hired Rowan Joffé as director. [18] Nicole Kidman leads as Christine Lucas [19] with Colin Firth as her husband. [20] Mark Strong plays Dr Edmund Nash and Anne-Marie Duff plays Christine's friend, Claire. [21] The film was shot in London and at Twickenham Studios. [22]
Nicole Mary Kidman is an Australian and American actress, model and producer. Known for her work in film and television productions across many genres, she has consistently ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and six Golden Globe Awards. She became the first Australian actor to receive the AFI Life Achievement Award honor in 2024.
Twickenham Film Studios is a film studio in St Margarets, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, that is used by various motion picture and television companies. It was established in 1913 by Ralph Jupp on the site of a former ice rink. At the time of its original construction, it was the largest film studio in the United Kingdom.
Anthony Bidulka is a Canadian writer of mystery, thriller and suspense novels. Bidulka's books have been nominated for Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Awards, Saskatchewan Book Awards, a ReLit award, and Lambda Literary Awards. In 2005, he became the first Canadian to win the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Mystery.
Eva Elisabeth "Liza" Marklund is a Swedish journalist and crime writer.
Rowan Marc Joffé is a British screenwriter and director. He is the son of director Roland Joffé and actress Jane Lapotaire, and half-brother of actress Nathalie Lunghi. Joffé began writing plays in university and was eventually awarded a Cameron Mackintosh bursary.
Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award-winning thriller, The Chain, and the Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. He is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Macavity Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Barry Award, the Audie Award, the Anthony Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
Joseph Finder is an American thriller writer. His books include Paranoia, Company Man, The Fixer, Killer Instinct, Power Play, and the Nick Heller series of thrillers. His novel High Crimes was made into the film of the same name starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. His novel Paranoia was adapted into a 2013 film starring Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman, and Harrison Ford.
Tana French is an American-Irish writer and theatrical actress. She is a longtime resident of Dublin, Ireland. Her debut novel In the Woods (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for best first novel. The Independent has referred to her as "the First Lady of Irish Crime".
Trespass is a 2011 American crime thriller film directed by Joel Schumacher, from a screenplay by Karl Gajdusek. It stars Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman as a married couple taken hostage by extortionists. It also stars Ben Mendelsohn, Cam Gigandet, Liana Liberato, Jordana Spiro, Dash Mihok, Emily Meade and Nico Tortorella.
Gail Carriger is an author of steampunk fiction and an American archaeologist. She was born in Bolinas, an unincorporated community in Marin County, California, and attended high school at Marin Academy. She received her undergraduate degree from Oberlin College, a masters of science in archaeological materials at England's University of Nottingham in 2000, and a master of arts in anthropology at the University of California Santa Cruz in 2008. She is a 2010 recipient of the Alex Awards.
Steve "S. J." Watson is an English writer. He debuted in 2011 with the thriller novel Before I Go to Sleep. Rights to publish the book have been sold in 42 countries and it has continued to be an international bestseller.
Stoker is a 2013 psychological thriller film directed by Park Chan-wook, in his English-language debut, and written by Wentworth Miller. The film stars Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Nicole Kidman, Dermot Mulroney, and Jacki Weaver.
The Railway Man is a 2013 war film directed by Jonathan Teplitzky. It is an adaptation of the 1995 autobiography of the same name by Eric Lomax, and stars Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jeremy Irvine, and Stellan Skarsgård. It premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival on 6 September 2013.
Lauren Milne Henderson is an English freelance journalist and novelist who also writes as Rebecca Chance. Her books include thrillers/bonkbusters/chick lit, mysteries, Tart Noir, romantic comedies, and young adult. Between 1996 and 2011 Henderson published 17 books under her own name. She began writing as Rebecca Chance in 2009, and now writes novels exclusively as Rebecca Chance.
Blossom Films is a production company founded by American-born Australian actress Nicole Kidman in 2010. The first production by the company was the film Rabbit Hole, based on the play of the same name by David Lindsay-Abaire. Their logo features a blossom tree growing.
Before I Go to Sleep is a 2014 mystery psychological thriller film written and directed by Rowan Joffé and based on the 2011 novel of the same name by S. J. Watson. An international co-production between the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Sweden, the film stars Nicole Kidman, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, and Anne-Marie Duff.
Alex Cross is a crime, mystery, and thriller novel series written by James Patterson. The protagonist of the series is Alex Cross, an African-American Metropolitan Police Department detective and father who counters threats to his family and the city of Washington, D.C. Supporting characters include two of Cross's children, Damon, and Janelle, as well as his grandmother Nana Mama. The series is usually narrated in first-person perspective by Alex Cross, and occasionally from the villains' point of view in third-person.
American-born Australian actress and producer Nicole Kidman has appeared in numerous film and television projects, as well as in theatre productions. She made her film debut in the Australian drama Bush Christmas in 1983. Four years later, she starred in the television miniseries Bangkok Hilton, for which she received the AACTA Award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama. Her breakthrough role was as a married woman trapped on a yacht with a murderer in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. She followed this with her Hollywood debut opposite Tom Cruise in Tony Scott's auto-racing film Days of Thunder (1990). Her role as a homicidal weather forecaster in Gus Van Sant's crime comedy-drama To Die For garnered Kidman a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical in 1996. She worked with Cruise again on Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992) and Stanley Kubrick's erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut in 1999.
Christie Watson is a British writer and Professor of Medical Humanities at the University of East Anglia. She has written six books including her first novel Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, which won the Costa First Novel Award, and first memoir The Language of Kindness which was a Number One Sunday Times Bestseller. Her work has been translated into 23 languages and adapted for theatre. Her latest book Moral Injuries is currently being developed as a television series.
Kimberley Chambers is an English novelist who lives in Essex. She has published sixteen crime novels, including the Mitchells & O'Haras and Butlers series, which are mainly set in Essex or East London. She writes gritty, crime family sagas, laced with her trademark humour, most often from the perspective of the villain. Three of her novels – Payback, Tainted Love and Life of Crime - have been Sunday Times Number One bestsellers.
It [Before I Go to Sleep] has been translated into 40 languages and racked up blockbuster numbers in France, Canada, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, and the United States. (And this was writer S.J. Watson's debut novel.)