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zinelib 's review for:
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
by Gabrielle Zevin
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Zevin, had me at hello
Above all, mine is a love story.
And like 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 would have had the faintest whisper of love about it, but maybe not.
Sometimes, a girl needs to lose.
I have my doubts that the love story wouldn't have happened regardless, but "sometimes a girl needs to lose" is a zinger. It's also the Gabrielle Zevin voice that entranced me in her Birthright (chocolate) series and more recently in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
As promised by the title, the main character, Naomi, is an amnesiac, rendered so after a fall down a flight of stairs, where she heroically saves the yearbook's new camera, but fails to protect her head. She wakes up as a 16-year-old whose memories only take her through the age of twelve. Naomi the amnesiac wakes to find three boys in her orbit: her rescuer James, her best friend Will, and her boyfriend Ace. Her strongest memories are of James, a hottie who is new to school, so it's not like she's lost time with him anyway.
Naomi is also adopted, a Russian orphan, an identity that figures in her search for self story. This isn't my favorite of Zevin's works, but well worth reading.