Conville & Walsh

S J Watson will be seeing his debut novel up on the big screen, according to reports from Variety.

Rowan Joffe is set to write and direct the project, with Ridley Scott‘s Scott Free U.K. producing and StudioCanal executive producing.

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP is the story of Christine, a forty-seven-year-old writer who, following a catastrophic accident in her mid-twenties, is incapable of forming and maintaining new memories for more than a day. She wakes every day believing herself to be single and with a whole lifetime of choice ahead of her, but she discovers instead that she lives with her husband, Ben, with most decisions already made.

The novel charts her attempts to make sense of her world. When Chrissie learns that she has been meeting with a doctor who is helping her to recover her memory - and that following his suggestion she has been keeping a journal in order to record her fragmentary recollections and piece together her past - she is hopeful that she may be cured. But the story that emerges is to set in motion a terrifying voyage of discovery that will ultimately have startling consequences for her and all who love her, leading her to question whether the truth is sometimes better left forgotten.

The book has now sold in over 30 countries, and is due to be published in May 2011.