Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science--A Memoir
    The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science--A Memoir
    The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science--A Memoir
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science--A Memoir

    Written by Jill Price and Bart Davis

    Narrated by Celeste Ciulla

    2.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Jill Price has the first diagnosed case of a memory condition called "hyperthymestic syndrome" -- the continuous, automatic, autobiographical recall of every day of her life since she was fourteen. Give her any date from that year on, and she can almost instantly tell you what day of the week it was, what she did on that day, and any major world event or cultural happening that took place, as long as she heard about it that day. Her memories are like scenes from home movies, constantly playing in her head, backward and forward, through the years; not only does she make no effort to call her memories to mind, she cannot stop them. The Woman Who Can't Forget is the beautifully written and moving story of Jill's quest to come to terms with her extraordinary memory, living with a condition that no one understood, including her, until the scientific team who studied her finally charted the extraordinary terrain of her abilities. Her fascinating journey speaks volumes about the delicate dance of remembering and forgetting in all of our lives and the many mysteries about how our memories shape us. As we learn of Jill's struggles first to realize how unusual her memory is and then to contend, as she grows up, with the unique challenges of not being able to forget -- remembering both the good times and the bad, the joyous and the devastating, in such vivid and insistent detail -- the way her memory works is contrasted to a wealth of discoveries about the workings of normal human memory and normal human forgetting. Intriguing light is shed on the vital role of what's called "motivated forgetting"; as well as theories about childhood amnesia, the loss of memory for the first two to three years of our lives; the emotional content of memories; and the way in which autobiographical memories are normally crafted into an ever-evolving and empowering life story. Would we want to remember so much more of our lives if we could? Which memories do our minds privilege over others? Do we truly relive the times we remember most vividly, feeling the emotions that coursed through us then? Why do we forget so much, and in what ways do the workings of memory tailor the reality of what's actually happened to us in our lives? In The Woman Who Can't Forget, Jill Price welcomes us into her remarkable life and takes us on a mind-opening voyage into what life would be like if we didn't forget -- a voyage after which no reader will think of the magical role of memory in our lives in the same way again.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 9, 2008
    ISBN9781436133203
    Author

    Jill Price

    Jill Price is the subject of the most exhaustive scientific inquiry into superior memory in history. She has kept her identity anonymous until now, known by the scientific community as patient "AJ," the first patient to ever be diagnosed with what the scientists who have studied her have called hyperthymestic syndrome. She lives in Los Angeles and is currently working as an administrator at an elementary school.

    Related to The Woman Who Can't Forget

    Related audiobooks

    Personal Memoirs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Jaycee Lee Dugard

      Aug 3, 2020

      Jaycee Lee Dugard, then 11, was walking up the street near her home in Meyers, California, when she was abducted on June 10, 1991, by a man in a car who knocked her unconscious with a stun gun. Her stepfather, Carl Probyn, saw the kidnapping throug

      1 min read

    • Article

      Your BRAIN On The PILL

      May 7, 2020

      Your BRAIN On The PILL
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Original Natural Born Killers: In the 1920s, two murderers were defended by science. The infamous case still echoes.

      Sep 11, 2014

      In May of 1924, the city of Chicago was shocked by a brutal murder. Two precocious University of Chicago graduate students, Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18,1 lured, abducted, and murdered Loeb’s 14-year-old cousin Bobby Franks by clubbing an

      5 min read

    • Article

      Sophie’s Secret

      Dec 28, 2020

      Sophie’s Secret
      4 min read

    • Article

      Trying To Understand 'What Made Maddy Run'

      Aug 2, 2017

      Journalist Kate Fagan's new book digs into the life of a young woman whose suicide shocked the University of Pennsylvania, where she ran track. Madison Holleran's life seemed perfect, until it wasn't.

      2 min read

    • Article

      January Fiction

      Dec 14, 2021

      The Maid by Nita Prose HarperCollins, £14.99 Molly Gray, the narrator of Nita Prose’s startlingly good debut novel, is a young woman who knows her place—and who rather likes it. For “approximately four years, 13 weeks, and five days” she’s been worki

      2 min read

    • Article

      Learning When To Die

      Jul 29, 2019

      Learning When To Die
      4 min read

    • Article

      In 'Nanaville,' Anna Quindlen Writes Of Her Adventures In Grandparenting

      Apr 24, 2019

      For decades, Quindlen has been channeling Baby Boomers' concerns, from motherhood and life-work balance to aging and downsizing. Her new book comes with a stern warning: Grandparents, know thy place.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Animals And Origami

      Oct 10, 2021

      I miss the sea breeze mussing my hair and the feel of cold sand worming between my toes. Even now, in autumn, the shoreline has its charms, like the squeals of the oystercatchers and the rhythmic ebb and flow of the tide. My dreams are of swimming in

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Perfect Daughter

      Jul 10, 2021

      Standing in a handstand, Jane arched her back and lowered her feet towards the head. Scorpion pose. She saw herself in the mirror, balancing in this challenging position. It was close to perfection… And she felt sick at the sight of it. From the loud

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Woman Who Can't Forget

    2.5/5

    8 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      It was shocking to me that a memoir about having a singularly unique neurological condition could be so horrifically boring. If you are interested in the boring life story of a privileged but vapid girl, go ahead, but if you want to hear about the science of memory, avoid this book.
    • 3/5
      Interesting in some areas, but at times the book was hard to follow. Given the facts that the author disclosed made it confusing overall. The thought of never forgetting things that have happened in your lifetime is intriguing. But the fact is that we all remember what we want to remember and forget what we want to forget.
    • 2/5
      Surprisingly dull, given the topic.
    • 4/5
      Most of us practice some kind of selective forgetting, meaning we can't call up every single day or event of our lives even if we try. But Jill Price remembers nearly every day from the time she was about eleven years old. Her memories come to her constantly at random. Read her story of how that highly autobiographical memory has affected her life.
    • 3/5
      Biography of Jill Price and the perks and downfalls of having an autobiographical superior memory. She remembers everything that happened, including all the good, mundane or bad. Each time she remembers it - it is like it happens again. Very interesting at the beginning, but began to grow dull as the story wore on. Other titles are out there with people with this condition including Marilu Henner (Elaine Nardo from the TV series Taxi.) Her book is titled: Total Memory Makeover: Uncover Your Past, Take Charge of Your Future.
    • 1/5
      I heard about this woman on the radio and was very curious to read the book, but it was a big disappointment. She is essentially a very dull person who has a need to believe she is extraordinary. Luckily for her some scientists were interested in studying her memory, which is unusual, even for an autistic savant/OCD personality. I don't recommend this book.
    • 2/5
      What seemed to be an interesting topic, that of a person with a superior memory, turned into one boring book. Jill Price has a superior autobiographical memory which allows her to remember with astonishing accuracy days of the week, dates, and years and those associated events of her life and around her. Unfortunately, this book became almost a recitation of those dates; then later turned into a memoir of sorts. Neither of those were particularly interesting to me. What I would have liked, in lieu of how this book had been written, would have been more information about this condition in a more coherently written story or one which put forth the medical details as the life of the author was being revealed.
    • 4/5
      Jill Price can remember everything she did and any major or minor events that took place on any date from the time she was about 11 years old. Before that, she remembers some, starting from when she was 2- or 3-years old. Problem is, the memories bombard her all the time; it just doesn’t turn off. When she was younger, she didn’t know this wasn’t the case for everyone. But, as she got older and tried to explain, people didn’t understand. Her memories include both the good and the bad, everything. This book explains what’s going on in her head, then goes back to explain how it has affected her at various points throughout her life. I found this really interesting. I don’t understand the low ratings, though from reading reviews, it seems like some didn’t like the biography/memoir part of the book, but I thought that really illustrated things. Apparently, she was the first person (in the early 2000s?) diagnosed with this: what they called “hyperthymestic syndrome”, but there are others now, as well. Scientists have been studying her (and she seems happy to have them do so to figure out how her brain works), and papers have been written about her, using a pseudonym.