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 perspective by insisting that Naomi’s actions weren’t confrontation but rather self-defense. Spaulding, too, remembers the event from a specific, subjective perspective. To him, both deaths were as good as accidental. He claims that he only meant to grab Naomi to quiet her, but somehow ended up stabbing her. He also admits that she wouldn’t stop fighting him and grabbing for the knife. He sees this as support for his belief that she left him no choice; Olivia sees this as an indication that the murder was intentional—she thinks the number of stab wounds is proof of that.

Complicating that further is Sam’s earlier observation that one stab wound is all it takes. Even if your victim doesn’t die from the first wound, you’ve already stabbed them. You must now commit and stab them as many more times as it takes. If we flesh out the idea of memory as multiple, inherently partial, and heavily biased by personal experience, we can approach Henry’s depiction of memory from a more nuanced angle. If, as we know, memory is heavily influenced by the beliefs and perspectives of the memory-holder, Olivia’s other retrieved memories can be considered as influenced by her present more than retrieved intact from her past.