In 1965, a young research scientist named Margot Sharpe is introduced to Elihu Hoopes, an attractive, charismatic amnesiac whose short-term memory has been devastated by a brief illness. Charming, mysterious, and deeply lonely, Eli is tortured by his condition. Trapped eternally in the present moment, he is also haunted by a fragmented memory from his childhood: the disturbing image of an unknown girl's body, floating under the surface of a lake. Inspired and moved by her exceptional patient, Margot dedicates her professional life to him and, in so doing, establishes an exceptional career in the rapidly expanding field of neuroscience. But where is the line between scientific endeavor and personal obsession? And how to interpret the wishes of a person who is trapped outside time? Atmospheric and unsettling, The Man Without a Shadow is a poignant exploration of loneliness, ethics, passion, aging, and memory_intricately, ambitiously structured and made both vivid and unnerving by Joyce Carol Oates´s eye for detail and her searing insight into the human psyche.
