memoirs of a teenage amnesiac (ya challenge #3)

i chose this book because i really liked elsewhere by gabriel zevin and i was not dissapointed in memoirs. after naomi falls down the steps of her school and bangs her head, she has lost all memory of the past four years. naomi has forgotten her boyfriend, her best friend, her parents divorce, the girls she eats lunch with...everything. as naomi learns, through her friends and family, about her past she sorts through the things she thinks and feels now and the way people tell her she acted before. she also has to come to terms with her feelings for ace, her boyfriend, and james, the new senior who is the first person she sees when she comes to after her accident.

i wonder how i would feel if i was a teenager reading this book. naomi and her relationships with will, ace, and james are so perfectly high school. the passion, the pressure, the fleeting nature of adolescent feelings whether they be love or infatuation. looking at it from 11 years post high school the intensity and drama of it all makes me alternately nostalgic and so grateful that i am not there anymore. but i am sure that most teenager girls will relate to naomi and her convoluted feelings for the guys in her life.

as i read memoirs, it was interesting to think how i would look at my life this minute if i couldn't remember the things that happened to me in the last year, two years, even longer. i would wonder how my relationships developed, how i ended up in the house i'm in now, how my daughters could be as old as they are. memory can be both a blessing and a curse. in a way, naomi is given a new beginning by the loss of the last four years.

it kind of reminds me of this absolutely fantastic dave wilcox song called when you're ready. sometimes memories keep us from being able to be the person we want to be...they sort of chain us to who we are...but we can always choose to be different. to forgive ourselves and others and move on.