The Girl I Used to Be

The novel is a powerful meditation on the nature of memory. Memory is not a faithful and objective recreation of an event; it is profoundly impacted by the subjective state of the person remembering. Henry approaches this complexity in the motif of “doubling.” Much as we approach a literary text as a site of the creation of meaning between the written word and the reader, meaning develops from memory through an interactive process.

One memory particularly ripe for analysis in this way is Olivia’s early memories of mommy “dancing.” As a child, without an understanding of the context, Naomi’s movements mimic dancing rather than self-defense. Later, she reenvisions this as Naomi attempting to fend off her killer. The matter is not resolved, however, as there are two other perspectives that contribute to the fullness of a memory of that event: Naomi’s and Spaulding’s. We can’t access Naomi’s, but Henry hints at its nature when Olivia finds the photo strip of Naomi and Terry making terrified faces. In that moment, Olivia wonders what the experience of the murder was like for her parents. In the car with Spaulding, she challenges his