Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Zevin, G. (2007). Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac. New York, NY: Ferrer, Straus, and Giroux.
ISBN-13: 9780374349462

•Plot Summary
What started out as a coin toss between two friends, leads to one of them being able to almost become a new person. Naomi Porter and Will Landsman are best friends, serve on the yearbook committee together, and it's his letter that she reads on awakening in the hospital with the last four years of her life missing from her memory. She does not remember that her parents got a divorce because her mother was having an affair, that the affair ended in a second marriage for her mother, and a little sister (Chloe). She does not remember that she plays tennis with her boyfriend, Ace, or what he looks like. She doesn't even remember what she looks like, only realizes that she isn't the twelve to fourteen year old she feels like, because her body is more mature. She vaguely recalls the boy that came with her in the ambulance, the one that found her at the bottom of the steps, James. She does remember that she was adopted by her parents from Russia, because it was believed her mother could not have children. She'd been found in a typewriter case in the pew of an Eastern Orthodox Church. The other pieces begin to come together again, due to help from Will, Naomi's father, and conversations overheard when she finally returns to school. With memory, also comes the realization that Naomi isn't interested in being who she was before. She breaks off her relationship with Ace, and stops playing tennis. Becoming friends again with one she had in middle school, Alice, she starts working on a theatre production instead of going to yearbook committee meetings and reviews. She gets enthusiastic about photography again, which she had planned to drop before the accident, and spends a great deal of her time thinking about her required final project-one that has to be of a personal nature. Perhaps most importantly to Naomi, at the time, she and James begin to connect. James has a past he cannot forget, an older brother that died of cancer, and what everyone else thought was an attempted suicide via pills. There was Sera, a girl he'd fallen in love with, then been forced away from when he was found her room with his wrist cut. Finally, from out of the blue, Naomi remembers all the things she'd forgotten, but doesn't tell anyone. James and Naomi fall in love, but his depression results in his asking her to fly to L.A. where he has gone to inspect the CSU campus he'd gotten into for college. Naomi's father, who'd covered up the fact he was getting married again, now has a daughter that lies to him. It isn't until James goes missing for several hours, and Naomi is able to access her cell phone in his car, that she realizes her father knows hers was no trip to San Diego for yearbook. She's grounded, although she doesn't seem to mind it so much, and James commits himself to a minor mental health care facility program. Ace and Will have both gotten new girlfriends, and yet Naomi agrees to be Ace's doubles-partner since his had an injury, an event that helps them resolve their problems on a friendly level. Naomi convinces Will to drive her to the house where James is staying, but the reception from her boyfriend is not warm, and soon after she receives a postcard from James, telling her to forget him. Will falls ill with pneumonia and cannot attend, but Naomi has come to like her father's fiancee, and she goes with the couple and Rosa Rivera's twin daughters to Martha's Vinyard, for the wedding. Naomi finally reaches a reconciliation with her mother, to whom she had not been speaking, despite meeting her step-father and sister in a theatre during a production at Christmas. Her mother helps her with a project idea, and Naomi produces a series of photos with a typewriter case in place of herself in each one. Over the phone, she and Will begin to speak again, although on the way back from the mental health facility, she had already confessed regaining her memory. Naomi takes over as Editor of the yearbook committee, and the two drift back toward one another, words of love not spoken-just understood.

•Critical Evaluation
Mediocre novel with an attempt at something deeper that never quite makes the mark, despite it's length. Topics that could have been explored more extensively, and despite Naomi's hopes to the contrary, she does seem to go from one boy to the next.

•Reader’s Annotation
Very basic exploration of what amnesia might be like, and how it could lead to great personal changes, even a chance to redo some things they regret.

•Information about the author
Gabrielle Zevin was born in October of 1977, in New York City, where she still lives. She graduated from Harvard University, and has received a Quill Award, a Border's Original Voices Award, and was nominated in 2007 for an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay-Conversations with Women.

To date, she has authored four novels, two of which were created for young adults. Her work has been translated into seventeen languages. She loves dogs, and keeps a personal blog at: http://gabriellezevin.blogspot.com/.

•Genre
Realistic Fiction

•Curriculum Ties
N/A

•Booktalking Ideas
Regret, ability to redo certain things in life, becoming someone else

•Reading Level/Interest Age
Grades 10-11/Ages 15-16

•Challenge Issues
N/A

•Why did you include this book in you’re the titles you selected?
This was recommended, and loaned to me, by a co-worker who really enjoys young adult literature. She gave this novel rave reviews, and I was enthusiastic about reading it. The concept was intriguing, mainly because it was from a teen's perspective, someone that presumably would not have many experiences, times, things to forget.