Identity and memory are so often intertwined. "We are, because we remember," Myla Goldberg says in her third novel, "The False Friend."

Thirty-two-year-old Celia is suddenly haunted by a memory she has repressed for years. Her best friend, Djuna, disappeared when they were 11 years old, and Celia is horrified to realize that she no longer thinks her friend was abducted by a stranger. Celia believes instead that her friend fell into a hole in the woods and that she left her there to die.

The rest of the novel circles around this memory, as Celia returns to her childhood home in the state of New York and looks up the girls who were with her on that fateful afternoon. Celia simultaneously deals with her complicated relationship with her longtime boyfriend, Huck, a pot-smoking schoolteacher who loves her deeply despite the growing distance between the two of them.

It's obvious from the start that Goldberg aims to explore the complicated friendships and rivalries of schoolgirls, and the fallibility of memory. Celia and Djuna were the best of friends but were also fiercely competitive and relentlessly cruel to one of the girls in their group, Leanne. "Her behavior had no excuse. Celia had not been the half-miserable girl of Leanne's creation. She had abused Leanne simply because she could."

These issues have already been explored far more effectively in Margaret Atwood's brilliant novel, "Cat's Eye." Part of the problem with Goldberg's novel lies in the awkward structure of some of the sentences, such as when Celia is recalling a childhood memory:

"Such cognizance was beyond Celia at the time. She had known then only that being privy to such redolence was simultaneously distasteful and thrilling, and she had attended her friend's lecture in a state of self-conscious motionlessness periodically interrupted by small, calculated gestures to assure and chastise herself with the scent's continued presence."

Celia is convinced her new memory is the truth, even though others don't believe her. She comes across as a stubborn woman who is dealing with the astounding grief of her childhood, and as a result is partly stuck in her shadow self. How many grown women still call their parents "Mommy" and "Daddy"?

It's unfortunate that "The False Friend" doesn't live up to her much better "The Bee Season." It's clear that Goldberg has tried hard to portray the psychological effects of childhood memories, but there is an emptiness to the book that is ultimately troublesome.

Michele Filgate is a writer and indie bookseller who lives in New Hampshire.