Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Above all, mine is a love story.
And like most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma.

Following this opening, Zevin's novel follows Naomi who, after falling down the front steps of her high school, develops retrograde amnesia and loses the past four years of her life. Now she's left to rediscover why she's dating her boyfriend, the basis of her relationship with her best friend, Will, and where exactly James, the new guy, who found her after she fell, fits in. In the process she attempts to find her own identity and decide if she wants to be the girl she was before she fell down the stairs.

Zevin's novel sucked me in quickly. From the opening lines that charmed me to her delightfully well-drawn characters, show more I was captured. Naomi is a normal 17 year-old girl in unusual circumstances and I found the way she dealt with her situation compelling. She doesn't always make the best decisions but the character comes from a realistic place that makes her mistakes forgivable. And while Naomi could be irritating, her best friend, Will is a fabulous character. A bit of an oddball, his obsession with making mixes and burning them to CD charmed me entirely.

Zevin handles her themes well and despite the slightly unusual premise of the novel, her characters are entirely realistic. A well-done YA novel exploring the issue of identity and what makes us us. show less

A beautiful book that explores the power of memory and self, in a way that made me stop and think many times.

It all began with a coin toss. A coin toss that Naomi loses, leading to her having to back to the yearbook room to get a camera, before slipping and falling on the school steps. When she awakens, a four-year chunk of memory is gone, and Naomi is forced to reexamine every facet of her life. Who was she before the accident? How did she feel about her family, friends, boyfriend, hobbies? And far more importantly, how does she feel now? Because, as Naomi soon discovers, the two are very different. And as she also learns, sometimes losing a fateful coin toss becomes a victory in the larger scope of life.

In a fascinating, eye-opening, show more and heart-tugging story, Zevin unravels the threads of Naomi's life, loves, and family, connecting past, present, and future together into a tapestry of what it means to be yourself. I loved this novel and all its themes and characters, from the transience of identity and memory, to the power of second chances and the reevaluation of life. Naomi was a real person who was wonderful to follow, somewhat naive without being dumb, dry without overly cynical, confused without being angsty. Her best friend, Will, was without a doubt my favorite secondary character, but all were fully fleshed out. The ending was brilliantly and beautifully ambiguous and realistic, leaving you with a satisfied, almost nostalgic feel and a sensation of hope and faith in life. Simple yet powerful novel I'd recommend to anyone. show less

In her junior year of high school, Naomi falls down the stairs, hits her head, and loses four years of memories. She recovers slowly - still tired and extra sensitive to light - and returns to school, but the memories don't come back, so she relies on her dad, her yearbook co-editor and friend Will, and her boyfriend Ace to tell her, essentially, who she is - or who she used to be.

Naomi's story is divided into three sections (I was, I am, I will) as she wades through high school without her memory - until, all at once, it does return (but she doesn't tell anyone right away). Even before she regained her memory, she broke up with Ace and started dating James, a senior new to their school; James was the one to see her fall and call 911, show more and he has a mysterious past of his own (nothing to do with her fall - his older brother died, and James has depression, and once attempted suicide).

In her new life, Naomi must rely on others, but also examine her own likes and dislikes, thoughts and feelings. When they are inconsistent with past behavior (as reported by others), she sometimes makes a change: she goes out for the school play, and she (eventually) reconnects with her mother, who is remarried and has a three-year-old daughter. (There is an extra layer of complication here, as Naomi was adopted from Russia.)

A fascinating premise, well executed.

Quotes

Each period had required me to be a slightly different person, and that was exhausting. (75)

[Will] was my only source of reliable information, though I was starting to question how reliable anyone was. Ask two people to tell you anything, you'll get two different versions....If you don't know anything for yourself, you can't be sure. (102)

I wondered if it was all that simple - if my memory never came back, maybe it was as easy as asking myself what I liked and what I didn't like. (126)

It's when you don't need something that you tend to lose it. (207)

An intimacy based on the trip more than the travelers... (240) show less

As the book went on, I cared less and less for Naomi. She didn't seem 17, but much younger and less mature - but then, even when I was 17, I can't stand most girls that age. She used her amnesia for very selfish reasons and never seemed to want to know much about her past, not because she was scared, but because it would get in the way of her selfish goals she set for herself after her accident. She used it to manipulate people that seemed only to be trying to help her. How she treated Will and her parents was disgusting. I can only assume she had this personality type - both before and after the accident - because she was given so much freedom as a child. How she was towards her mother, adoptive or not, and how her mother just let it show more go was so mind-blowingly unrealistic I couldn't believe it.
The main reason I finished this book is that Zevin is an excellent wordsmith and I did want to know how the story ended, even if I had stopped caring about Naomi long before I reached the half-way point. I would have much rather read a story about James' past or Will in general - they were much more interesting, though also not entirely believable, characters. show less

I love Gabrielle Zevin's writing. Her dialog is realistic, and her stories flow. I read Elsewhere in 2009 and have been following her ever since. Somehow I missed this one, about a teen, Naomi, who falls down the stairs at school and loses her memory of the last four years of her life. Imagine being a high school junior with no memory of the past four years. She discovers a boyfriend she's not interested in, a friend who expects her to return to a previous enthusiasm for editing the high school yearbook, and a new boy who helps her when he finds her at the bottom of the stairs. At home, she is living with her father, because her parents are divorced and Mom is remarried, all of which she has forgotten. There's lots happening here show more besides amnesia. She develops a relationship with the new boy, James, who has his own problems, a severe depression that put him in the hospital.

Meanwhile, she loses interest in the yearbook, and her close friendship with Will, who, it turns out, has had a crush on her for a long time. And at home, she discovers Dad has a girlfriend, no, a fiancee that he intends to marry soon. She has a lot on her plate. Still, at points in this story, I can't help feeling that she's a bit of a spoiled brat, which made me feel less sympathy for her than I expected to.

And though James is rehospitalized, we never find out what happened to him in the first place. He has survived the death of an older brother, but we don't know why he feels so guilty. show less

“Above all, mine is a love story. And like most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma.”

Remember the last four years of your life? Naomi doesn’t. The summer before her junior year of high school, Naomi lost a coin toss, was designated to go back to get the yearbook camera, and fell with the camera down the school stairs. Upon waking, the last four years of her life are gone from her memory. Gone are her memories of her parents’ divorce, her half-sister Chloe, her best friend Will, and her boyfriend Ace. Most significantly, gone is her sense of identity.

On the one hand, talk about your major bummer. On the other hand, this absence of memory and identity gives Naomi the chance start fresh and build show more her identity anew. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is the story of a girl who sets about redefining herself in the face of complete and utter blank regarding her identity.

To begin creating herself anew, Naomi sets about discovering clues to who she formerly was. Her main source of information regarding her former self is her best friend Will (who somewhat abstrusely has nicknamed her Chief). Her father also tries to help her by making a list. Along the way, she discovers useful information such as she has a boyfriend, owns birth control pills, keeps a food diary, and co-edits the yearbook. Post-head trauma Naomi is not sure she knows who this girl is. Even when her memory returns, Naomi’s relationships and Naomi herself remain changed.

Three guys–who sometimes confuse and sometimes illuminate aspects of her identity–loom large in Naomi’s life. She can’t really remember what she saw in Ace, although he does play a mean game of tennis and provides her with an “in” to the popular crowd. She just met James after the accident, so she is free to build this relationship anew; she feels a strong attraction to James and to his mercurial moods. And then there’s Will—Will, her best friend, fellow yearbook editor, maker of mix takes, and the one who just may be best positioned to help her discover the Naomi she wants to become.

I was, I am, and I will are the three parts of Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac. Zevin’s story is about the process of becoming. Throughout Naomi’s self-discover process, the novel does include teen drinking, smoking, references to attempted suicide (wrist-cutting technique) and past sex. None of these issues are the main focus however, as Zevin is using them as tools to explore her themes of memory, love, and identity. She writes about the bond to the past, the depth of friendship, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Even though our own lives are not likely to offer the same opportunity as Naomi’s life did to fully erase and start over re-creating our identities and relationships, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac serves as a necessary reminder (how ironic) that each new day offers a fresh beginning with opportunities to make new choices.

Need another book?

For further exploring the rediscovery of relationships and reinvention of self: I Was a Teenage Popsicle by Bev Katz Rosenbaum

For further exploration of the formation of identity and teen trauma: Someday this Pain will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron

For further exploration of love and loss by Gabrielle Zevin herself: Elsewhere. show less

What if you were given a blank slate? One day you wake up and you can't remember the past four years. You have no idea what your tastes are, who your best friends are... Would you still love the people you thought you loved before? Would you find that there were things you liked out of habit that now have no appeal? Would you want to find out everything you could to recreate the you that you were? Or would you start over?

Naomi Parker has been given a blank slate. She fell down the steps at her high school, hit her head, and now she can't remember anything from the past four years. She doesn't remember meeting her best friend Will, she doesn't remember why she likes her jock boyfriend Ace, she doesn't remember her parents' divorce, she show more doesn't remember how to drive. What Naomi has is the chance to start over, to press the reset button on her life. And the things that remain the same might indicate what she should really be doing with her life and where her heart truly lies.

I thought this was an excellent book with a very interesting premise. It's divided into three sections: I was, I am, I will. In the first section, Naomi is trying to get back the life that she had, to recreate it as closely as she can. In the middle section she realizes that some things are different now and some things she'll have to figure out from scratch. In the final section, Naomi comes to terms with her life and decides where she'll go from there. This is a book that will make you think and reevaluate your own life, but it's not too heavy and Naomi comes across as a very realistic 16-year-old girl.

I'd wager that this one's a Printz contender. show less