YA or STFU

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, by Gabrielle Zevin

Zevin, Gabrielle (2007). Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac. NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. 271 pages.

Interestingly, this is the second YA novel about retrograde amnesia I’ve read this year. The first was the British import Kat Got Your Tongue by Lee Weatherly, which I reviewed for School Library Journal. Interesting, no?

Divided into three sections entitled, “I Was,” “I Am,” and “I Will,” Zevin’s novel chronicles Naomi’s junior year at school during which she suffers from limited retrograde amnesia (she can’t remember the last four years of her life) following a fall down the stairs. Naomi’s amnesia is both a blessing and a curse (cringe!): while her newfound “blank slate” status gives her an opportunity to re-create herself outside of the parameters she and her friends seem to have created for themselves, near daily surprises related to her family life and her relationships with her boyfriend and pals in the popular crowd keep her in an almost constant state of unbalance. Almost immediately Naomi breaks up with her dumb jock boyfriend and begins consorting with a new guy, an older, moody classmate with a dark past. This new guy’s problems are even more hardcore than Naomi’s: he’s been hospitalized with mental illness in the past and has tried to commit suicide twice. During his and Naomi’s relationship, the two struggle with both of their “head traumas.”

While the premise does seem a little soap-opera-y, in Zevin’s hands the novel moves intelligently and meaningfully along. Naomi’s troubled relationship with her new boyfriend who warns her to “forget him” if he begins to sink into the dark hole of depression again is well integrated with Naomi’s central negotiation of her new, if incomplete, life. In fact, it is Zevin’s description of Naomi’s boyfriend’s eventual breakdown that is the most compelling, realistic and sensitively wrought portion of the novel. While the conclusion is a tiny bit too pat (I was hoping for a totally different revelation involving Naomi’s best friend that would totally spoil the ending if I revealed it here), Zevin’s second novel (anybody remember the heartbreaking but hopeful Elsewhere?) is another rich offering from an author from whom I hope we continue to hear more.

P.S. Sorry for that awkward last sentence, but I can’t stand ending a sentence–much less a paragraph–with a preposition!