World Famous Comics: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
By: Gabrielle Zevin Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 288 Publication Date: August 21, 2007 Reading Level: Young Adult Release Date: August 21, 2007
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.
She does reality well, too. I read Zevin's _Elsewhere_ at the urging of my (then) 12 year-old niece and was a little surprised to like it as much as I did. I generally love YA novels, but the premise put me off until I'd let it suck me in. I'd worried about icky sweetness, but I could have saved my energy. It's off-center and very good.
I happened across _Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac_ about six months later, and I just loved it. Zevin does reality even better than she does the unreality of _Elsewhere_. Well, I assume it's reality. I find good parents and functional, if broken, families to carry a fantasy air for me, but these felt like they could exist, fairly near our planet, too. Beyond the loving parents, though, it's the portrayals of the teenage amnesiac and her peers that sold me on the book. I knew a James once, although it was an even messier situation and lacked a happy ending. I'm pretty sure Naomi's walked this earth, too, or does in some quantum variant, along with Will. They're smart, creative, energetic, good kids who are the objects on which life practices its blows. Their responses range from errors to misunderstandings to loving connection. They're people living a story and people you want to follow through that story. I liked them.
Thanks to Zevin for this good read. I'm definitely passing it on to my (now) 13 year old (going on l7 year old) niece. Good stuff.
memoirs of a teenage amnesiac it was a good book, and had a good message of finding yourself and who you want to be. it shows a different side to what you might think your life might be like if you were a teenage girl who forgot everything that happened in the last 4 years of her life.
A great book! Above all, mine is a love story. Unlike most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma. It began with a coin toss. The coin came up tails. I was heads. Had it gone my way, there might not be a story at all. Just a chapter, or a sentence in a book whose greater theme had yet to be determined. Maybe this chapter woul've had the faintest whisper of love about it. But maybe not. Sometimes, a girl needs to lose.
I read Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin , and loved it. It's a fun book about a girl who suffers from amnesia and can't remember the last four years of her life.
At the beginning of the book, Naomi Porter and her best friend Will, co-editors of the school yearbook, are in the school parking lot. They decide with a coin toss who should go back to school to retrieve a camera. Naomi loses, so she has to go back, but trips down the stairs and hits her head. As a result, she suffers from amnesia: she can't remember anything beyond sixth grade, anything from the last four years of her life.
Naomi feels like she's a different person from the one she cannot remember. She cannot remember her best friend, her parents' divorce, or her father's fiancèe. She cannot understand why she even liked her boyfriend in the first place.
The main themes of the book are identity and change. As a matter of fact, the novel is divided into three sections: "I was", "I am", and "I will". Naomi's reflections on who she is and who has she become reflect an identity crisis, triggered by a loss of her most recent memories.
I liked this book very much. Following Naomi's love story was fun and refreshing. The outcome might not be the most original, as I was able to anticipate the ending from the middle of the book on. But still, a fun book, one I'd recommend to lovers of YA fiction.
A fine story of discovery and change and will intrigue many teen readers If Naomi had picked tails she wouldn't have had the accident which lead to her amnesia - but she didn't make the different choice. And now she doesn't remember her boyfriend, doesn't understand the jokes of her friends, and doesn't even know her family. MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE AMNESIAC is a fine story of discovery and change and will intrigue many teen readers.
A review of Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac There are several reviews that sum the book up very well, so I won't take a lot of time doing it. The short version is that high school junior Naomi Porter takes a fall down her school's stairs and the resulting bump causes her to lose the past four years' worth of memories. The book is divided into three sections, pertaining to Naomi's memories (or lack thereof), her attitude towards life, and her relationships with Ace (her boyfriend), James (the enigmatic and exquisite brooding guy that discovers her on the stairs), and Will (her best friend who supposedly knows everything about her).
The tone and style of this story felt so perfect. I wish I could write like this. None of the characters were far beyond belief, and Zevin creates a story where you can feel for each character, even the jerks. Yes, it's a love story, but it's more a story about remembering and forgetting people, relationships, and yourself. It doesn't hammer any messages home, but gives you a year of Naomi's life and how she reconciles herself with her past and makes choices for how she'll live her life. It's beautiful and funny and sweet and sad. I think that's something all books should try to be. I don't know that I'm really doing the book justice, so I'll just say that you should go out and read this book!
On a side note, one of the characters deals with depression. This was probably one of the hardest parts of the book to read. Zevin does such an excellent job of showing that transitions from "normal" as this character stops taking medication. You feel badly for Naomi, who puts herself in a fairly dangerous situation, as well as this character, who seems to be falling apart while desperately trying to keep things together. I really appreciate the way that Zevin handles this part of her story.
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