Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin

Everything would have been different if Naomi hadn’t picked heads in the coin toss. She wouldn’t have gone back to school for the yearbook camera. She wouldn’t have hit her head falling down the stairs, resulting in amnesia. But that’s the way it turned out. Now, Naomi can’t remember her boyfriend Ace or why she fell for him in the first place or the story behind her best friend Will’s nickname for her or anything else from the past few years of her life. She finds herself in a frighteningly foreign life she barely recognizes as her own, but she has to at least try to piece it back together and try to remember who she was, who she is, and who she wants to be.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is a book that I’ve wanted to read for a very long time, ever since I finished reading Elsewhere years ago. Like Zevin’s first YA novel, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is beautifully written and very thoughtful. It is a story that so thoroughly explores the importance of identity to the teenage self as well as the power behind close relationships, whether with a family member, good friend, or significant other. Memory is something that has always fascinated me, so it was so interesting to see how Zevin manipulated Naomi’s memories over the course of the novel. I am a little sad to say that Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac did not grab me in quite the same way that Elsewhere did, but I can’t deny that this novel is one of the more unusual and contemplative contemporary stories I've read and is satisfyingly filled with complex, believable characters and Zevin’s unwaveringly strong writing.

Fans of Elsewhere will want to take a look at Zevin’s second YA novel Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, as will readers who also liked 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson and The Beautiful Between by Alyssa Sheinmel.

Rating: 3.75

Review copy borrowed