A Bizarre Reading Experience

In the library the other day I spotted this rather intriguing looking cover and thought I'd better take it home. The title sounded vaguely familiar but I thought if I started it I would remember if I'd read it or not. So I started it, and despite a sort of deja-deja vu effect I had no recollection of it whatsoever. So I pressed on, quite intrigued by the story of the ancient writer, Vida Winter, and her would-be biographer Margaret Lea, their curious relationship, the fact that both were twins, the unfolding gothic strangeness of Vida's story, and really wanting to know how it was all going to turn out. But that title kept nagging away at me and eventually when I was about halfway through, I did a little search back through my old posts and found -- you've obviously seen where this is going -- that I had read and reviewed this novel back in December 2007, almost exactly three years ago. Well. Even with that knowledge I still couldn't remember how it ended, so I had to skim through the rest of the novel to find out. Almost the strangest thing about all this, leaving aside the rather worrying loss of memory, was the fact that I seem to have liked it so much the first time I read it, whereas this time I was intensely irritated by the narrative voice, very critical overall of the faux gothic plot, and very aware of the many nods in the direction of Jane Eyre etc etc, all of which seem to have passed me by entirely the first time round. Am I losing my mind? (Don't answer that or I might get worried). All I can think is that it really is a very forgettable novel. I can, after all, remember all those 70 odd books I listed yesterday. Pretty bizarre, though.