I Know Who You Are: A Novel

As the novel’s protagonist and unreliable narrator, Aimee Sinclair embodies the psychological consequences of a life built on trauma and pretense. Her identity is a fractured and performative construct, as her profession signifies. She reflects, “Acting is easy; it’s being me that I find difficult” (3), a statement that encapsulates her core conflict. For Aimee, adopting the persona of a character is a reprieve from the anxiety of inhabiting a self she doesn’t recognize or trust. This disconnect is a direct result of her childhood kidnapping, after which her captors forced her to change her name from Ciara to Aimee, and her personal history was violently erased. The recurring motif of mirrors, in which she often fails to recognize her own reflection, is a constant reminder of this internal fragmentation. Her struggle thematically highlights The Fragility of a Constructed Identity, suggesting that the self isn’t a stable entity, but a role one is forced to play.

Aimee’s narrative is filtered through the lens of transient global amnesia, a condition that makes her memory unreliable and renders her susceptible to Eamonn’s gaslighting tactics as her husband, Ben. Her inability to recall significant events, particularly the traumatic night of Ben’s disappearance, creates the plot’s central mystery and enacts a state of constant uncertainty.