A remarkable specimen of reverting narrative is Grant
Allen's Recalled to Life. The opening scene depicts the
heroine standing over the body of a murdered man, her
father. Her mind is perfectly sound, but she has lost all
memory. She cannot recollect how she came to be there,
who fired the pistol — in short, any event of her previous
hfe. The rest of the story relates her efforts to recover her
memory and reconstruct her past life piece by piece. The
narrative is autobiographic in form.
The present remarks are not offered as an adequate
treatment of this mode of writing, but only as a hint to
the reader to discover additional instances for himself.
