I had rather a strange experience reading Engleby. About 50 pages in, it began to feel very familiar. At first I thought I was confusing Engleby’s memories of boarding school with Magnus Pym’s from A Perfect Spy (officially sanctioned sadistic bullying – a staple ingredient of public school life until fairly recently it would seem). But one line finally made me realise that I had read this book before, and clearly not that long ago as it was only published in 2007. Yet I could remember absolutely nothing about what happened; ironic considering the main thrust of the plot is the narrator’s complete loss of memory during significant events in his life. Has Sebastian Faulks pulled off an astonishing literary device, whereby the reader experiences the exact same mental blankness as his creation? I know my memory of books is not nearly as good as it was, but I can usually remember if I’ve read something before, even if I can’t recall much about the plot. And there is no reason to block it from my mind; on the contrary, I enjoyed it. Elegantly written, it really conjured up a sense of time and place as Engleby moved from school to university to Fleet Street. And he was an engaging narrator, even if he did turn out to be a (spoiler alert) raging psychopath.

So, the question is, has anyone else suffered from this form of temporary amnesia? Or am I just getting old?