Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac: A Novel - Hardcover

Zevin, Gabrielle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374349460 ISBN 13: 9780374349462

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2007

Synopsis

If Naomi had picked tails, she would have won the coin toss. She wouldn't have had to go back for the yearbook camera, and she wouldn't have hit her head on the steps. She wouldn't have woken up in an ambulance with amnesia. She certainly would have remembered her boyfriend, Ace. She might even have remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place. She would understand why her best friend, Will, keeps calling her "Chief." She'd know about her mom's new family. She'd know about her dad's fiancée. She never would have met James, the boy with the questionable past and the even fuzzier future, who tells her he once wanted to kiss her. She wouldn't have wanted to kiss him back.

But Naomi picked heads.

After her remarkable debut, Gabrielle Zevin has crafted an imaginative second novel all about love and second chances.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

About this title

About the Author

Gabrielle Zevin's first young adult novel, Elsewhere, was an ALA Notable Book and a Quill Book Award nominee. She is also the author of books for adults including The Hole We're In and Margarettown, and of the screenplay for Conversations with Other Women, which received an Independent Spirit Award nomination. Of her writing, The New York Times Book Review said, "Zevin's touch is marvelously light even as she considers profundities." A dog lover and Harvard graduate, she lives in New York City.

Reviews

*Starred Review* Contemporary realism, set askew, is the silver streak of Zevin, whose Elsewhere (2005) depicted a teen's experiences in the afterlife. This equally sensitive, joyful novel, her second for YAs, tackles the slippery nature of human identity, deceptively tucked within a plot familiar from TV soaps. After high-school junior Naomi conks her head, she can't remember anything that happened since sixth grade. She is by turns mystified and startled by evidence of her present life, from the birth-control pills in her bedside table to her parents' astonishing, rancorous split. Eventually, the memories return, leaving Naomi questioning the basis of a new, intense romance, and wondering which of her two lives, present or former, represents her most authentic self. The amnesia device could have been more convincingly played, but Zevin writes revealingly about emotions and relationships. Especially vivid is the Hepburn-Tracy bond Naomi shares with yearbook co-chief Will, whom she wounds with her lurching self-reinvention even as she discovers deeper feelings: "I had thought the way I felt about Will was just a room, but it had turned out to be a mansion." Pulled by the heart-bruising love story, readers will pause to contemplate irresistible questions: If the past were a blank slate, what would you become? Does the search for one's truest identity necessarily mean rejecting all that has gone before? Mattson, Jennifer

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374349460
• ISBN 13: 9780374349462
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288