Leonard Fife is on his deathbed. As a legendary filmmaker, he decides to bare his soul and allows his former team to film his dying thoughts. They are convinced they will be filming his thoughts on his career, but instead, Fife chooses to confess to his wife Emma the true life he lived. Or, is it? What is reality; what the public knows, what Emma knows and believes, or is it all a delusion?
It's an interesting look at the thoughts of a dying man. He feels as if his memories are crystal clear, and if time flows through his words, but as the story moves on it is harder to determine the truth from his jumbled memories. Fife is convinced he has to tell his wife the truth about his past in order to know, when he dies, that she loves the real him; so that someone can know him and love him anyway. The story he spins - it is difficult to determine what the truth is. The filming, which the story is based upon, takes place over just a few hours, and is done in a method Fife himself made famous throughout history; a dark, noir film of a darkened room and Fife under a spotlight telling his story. Getting to know Fife through his memories paints a very different picture of the man we first thought we were meeting.
I found this book to be thought provoking and intriguing, if not a little confusing at times, as Fife switches between the past and present and as his thoughts become more and more disjointed. What is the reality of memory; are our thoughts and memories really the truth of our lives? Does reality change, or do we?
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