 His second novel, "The Amnesiac", tells the story of James Purdew, a man obsessed with uncovering the events of three years of his life about which he remembers nothing.Taylor lives in Texas with his family.His 2003 book "The Amnesiac" includes the fictional main character James Purdew and a character named Tomas Ryal  a Czech philosopher, playwright and poet, who is described as living from 1900 to 1973 and is famous for his controversial repudiation of the existence of memory, and also for the mysterious manner of his death.