she had not been able to remember

[Maybo]

There was so much going through her mind that she wasn’t able to pinpoint anything she had not been able to remember, and she shook the thought from her mind.

Source: The Haunting of Ashley Masterson: A Riveting Haunted House Ghost Thriller by Marie Wilkens

Why was "She had not been" used instead of "she wasn't"? Is it because the failure of remembering happened before she tried to pinpoint something?

 

[emsr2d2]

That would be my reading of it.

 

[Tarheel]

Assuming I was the writer, had I thought that sentence up I would have either rejected it or rewritten it.

 

[Maybo]

Assuming I was the writer, had I thought that sentence up I would have either rejected it or rewritten it.

How would you rewrite it?

 

[Tarheel]

It's hard to say. If you can't remember something you can't think about it, can you? So what does the writer mean by "pinpoint"? It's hard to say.

It would be easier to do a rewrite if I knew what the writer was trying to say.

It's hard enough to rewrite something if you what the person means to say.

If I were you I would forget about that passage. There are only 24 hours in a day.