What: James Hilton's Random Harvest curls itself around flashbacks and name changes and lost time and shellshock. It bounces between two world wars and keeps some characters just out of the line of sight, in preparation for a sucker-punch twist at the end.
(In case you're wondering, the very successful movie adaptation flattens out the flashbacks and twists, but ratchets the melodrama factor way up.)
Comparable to: Two of Hilton's similarly acclaimed books, Lost Horizon and Goodbye Mr. Chips, were also made into movies.
Representative quote: "For the first time in human history, a sophisticated society faced its own extinction, not theoretically in the future, but by physical death, perhaps tomorrow."
You might not like it if: The movie ruined the ending for you.
How to get it: Buyable, borrowable, Kindle-able. And, seriously, read the book before you watch the movie.
Connections to previous Wreckage: Random Harvest was on List #22: A Few of the Best Books I Read in 2012. The film adaptation was Rec. #252.
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