Tory Henwood Hoen’s sophomore novel arrives as an unexpected gift—a story that transforms the devastating reality of Alzheimer’s disease into something surprisingly luminous. Before I Forget follows twenty-six-year-old Cricket Campbell as she returns to her family’s Adirondack lake house to care for her father, Arthur, whose dementia has progressed to the point where he no longer recognizes his own daughter. What begins as an act of familial duty morphs into something far stranger and more wonderful: the discovery that as Arthur loses his grip on the past, he gains an uncanny ability to glimpse the future.
This is Hoen’s second novel following The Arc, and it demonstrates a marked evolution in her craft. Where her debut explored the pressures of modern romance and career ambition, Before I Forget ventures into deeper emotional territory, blending literary fiction with touches of magical realism to explore how we construct meaning from loss.
The Architecture of Grief and Grace
Cricket Campbell embodies a particular kind of millennial malaise—she’s spent years drifting through wellness jobs and geographical locations, unable to root herself anywhere since a tragedy upended her teenage years. Her return to Catwood Pond isn’t just about caregiving; it’s about confronting the ghosts she’s been running from for nearly a decade. The novel’s genius lies in how it positions Arthur’s memory loss not as pure tragedy, but as an unexpected liberation for both father and daughter.
Hoen writes with remarkable emotional intelligence about the paradoxes of dementia. Arthur may not remember Cricket’s name, but he retains something deeper—an intuitive wisdom that seems sharpened rather than dulled by his condition. When he begins offering prophetic insights to desperate visitors who make pilgrimages to their remote property, the novel shifts into its most enchanting register. These aren’t parlor tricks or feel-good platitudes; Arthur’s prophecies carry genuine weight, helping people reframe their traumas and envision new futures.
The oracle project that Cricket and her father develop together—complete with bibliomancy, cold plunges in the frozen pond, and ceremonial elixirs—walks a delicate line between whimsy and profundity. Hoen resists the temptation to explain away the magic; instead, she lets it exist as both metaphor and genuine mystery.
A Daughter’s Journey from Hollow to Whole
Cricket’s character arc forms the emotional spine of the novel. She arrives at Catwood Pond depleted, stuck, and ashamed—qualities that feel authentically rendered rather than manufactured for narrative convenience. Her decade-long estrangement from her father and from this place stems from a New Year’s Eve accident that killed her first love, Seth Atwater. The guilt she’s carried has calcified into a kind of paralysis, leaving her unable to move forward or to believe she deserves happiness.
Cricket’s transformation unfolds through:
- Reconnecting with the natural world and the rhythms of the seasons
- Building unexpected community with locals like Carl and Paula
- Rediscovering childhood dreams of becoming a veterinarian
- Learning to be present with her father without the burden of who he used to be
- Finding romance with Max, Paula’s nephew, that feels earned rather than convenient
What makes Cricket’s journey compelling is its messiness. She doesn’t heal in a linear fashion; she backslides, makes questionable financial decisions, and struggles with her controlling mother and overachieving sister Nina. Hoen resists easy redemption narratives, instead showing how healing happens in spirals—returning to painful moments from new angles until they finally begin to shift.
The Alchemy of Memory and Forgetting
Hoen’s treatment of Alzheimer’s is both heartbreaking and surprisingly hopeful without veering into sentimentality. She captures the daily indignities and sorrows—Arthur forgetting his daughter’s identity, repeating questions, getting confused about basic tasks—while also exploring what might remain when explicit memory fades. The novel suggests that beneath our conscious recollections lies something more essential: the imprint of love, the residue of who we’ve been to each other.
The magical realism element serves this thematic exploration beautifully. Arthur’s prophetic abilities emerge as his conventional memory dissolves, suggesting that perhaps our rational minds sometimes obstruct deeper forms of knowing. When he predicts a woman’s career change or helps a grieving father process trauma, he’s not performing miracles—he’s accessing a kind of unfiltered empathy that his deteriorating filters allow.
This philosophical approach extends to the novel’s treatment of grief. Cricket’s unresolved mourning for Seth becomes a lens through which Hoen examines how we carry the dead with us, how trauma can freeze us in time, and how true healing requires integration rather than forgetting. The eventual appearance of Seth’s mother, Jill, provides one of the novel’s most moving sequences—a scene of mutual grace that offers Cricket something better than closure: understanding.
Where the Novel Loses Its Footing
Despite its considerable strengths, Before I Forget occasionally stumbles under the weight of its own ambitions. The pacing can feel uneven, particularly in the middle section where the oracle project gains momentum. Some readers may find the transition from intimate family drama to quasi-public phenomenon happens too quickly, straining credulity even within the novel’s magical realist framework.
Areas where the novel falters:
- The subplot involving Cricket’s former boss Gemma and the proposed commercialization of the oracle feels underdeveloped and somewhat predictable
- Minor characters like Cricket’s mother occasionally read as types rather than fully realized people
- The resolution of certain plot threads—particularly around Cricket’s vocational direction—arrives with almost too much neatness
- The romantic storyline with Max, while charming, doesn’t quite achieve the emotional depth of the father-daughter relationship
Additionally, readers seeking a more conventional narrative about Alzheimer’s may find the magical realism elements too fanciful. Hoen’s approach won’t resonate with everyone, particularly those who prefer their literary fiction firmly grounded in realism.
A Voice That Lingers
Hoen’s prose style deserves special mention. She writes with a conversational ease that belies considerable craft—sentences that feel effortless but carry substantial emotional freight. Her descriptions of the Adirondack landscape are particularly vivid, capturing both its austere beauty and its capacity for transformation across seasons. The novel’s structure, moving through a full year at Catwood Pond, allows Hoen to use seasonal change as both backdrop and metaphor for Cricket’s internal journey.
The dialogue sparkles with authenticity, particularly in exchanges between Cricket and her father. Hoen has a gift for capturing how relationships persist even when recognition fades—the cadences of affection, the muscle memory of love.
Who Will Cherish This Story
Before I Forget will resonate most powerfully with readers who:
- Appreciate character-driven literary fiction with gentle magical elements
- Have experienced or are experiencing a loved one’s cognitive decline
- Enjoy coming-of-age stories that recognize adulthood as an ongoing process
- Value novels that explore family dynamics with nuance and compassion
- Seek stories about finding purpose through unexpected paths
This is ultimately a novel about the courage required to return to the places and people we’ve fled, to face our failures and grief, and to discover that redemption often looks different than we imagined. It’s about the peculiar grace that can emerge when we stop trying to hold onto what’s slipping away and instead open ourselves to what wants to emerge.
Finding Companions on the Shelf
Readers drawn to Before I Forget might explore:
- “Still Life” by Sarah Winman – Another novel blending everyday magic with themes of found family and second chances
- “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” by Rachel Joyce – For its tender exploration of late-life transformation and redemption
- “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig – Shares the theme of rediscovering purpose and possibility
- “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt – Features healing through unexpected connections and coastal setting
- “The Memory Police” by Yoko Ogawa – For readers intrigued by the philosophical dimensions of memory
A Verdict Worth Remembering
Before I Forget isn’t a perfect novel, but it’s an affecting one. Hoen has crafted a story that honors the complexity of caregiving, the mystery of consciousness, and the possibility of transformation at any stage of life. While some plot elements feel formulaic and the pacing occasionally drags, the novel’s emotional core remains strong. Cricket’s journey from drift to direction, from guilt to grace, earns its hopeful resolution. This is a book that trusts its readers to sit with ambiguity, to find meaning in both remembering and forgetting, and to believe that even our most painful losses can become portals to new beginnings.