Books like The memory painter by Gwendolyn Womack

Bryan Pierce has captivated the art world with paintings that appear to be born from his extraordinarily vivid dreams. Each work leaves audiences unsettled, and as Bryan awakens he finds himself gifted with sudden talents—speaking obscure languages and an uncanny mastery of chess. Paired with his art, these talents raise questions about the origins of his dream inspirations. Linz Jacobs, a dedicated neurogeneticist researching how memory is encoded in the brain, is nonetheless drawn to Bryan’s work when he exhibits a painting that seems to recreate her own haunting, recurring nightmare. Their inevitable meeting sparks Bryan’s most powerful dream yet, depicting a team of scientists on the brink of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease who died in a laboratory explosion decades earlier. The intertwining lives of an artist and a scientist explore memory, identity, and the fine line between reality and imagination.

First publish date: 2015