Great premise. Great writer. A new favorite. ( )

I love Gabrielle Zevin's writing. Her dialog is realistic, and her stories flow. I read Elsewhere in 2009 and have been following her ever since. Somehow I missed this one, about a teen, Naomi, who falls down the stairs at school and loses her memory of the last four years of her life. Imagine being a high school junior with no memory of the past four years. She discovers a boyfriend she's not interested in, a friend who expects her to return to a previous enthusiasm for editing the high school yearbook, and a new boy who helps her when he finds her at the bottom of the stairs. At home, she is living with her father, because her parents are divorced and Mom is remarried, all of which she has forgotten. There's lots happening here besides amnesia. She develops a relationship with the new boy, James, who has his own problems, a severe depression that put him in the hospital.

Meanwhile, she loses interest in the yearbook, and her close friendship with Will, who, it turns out, has had a crush on her for a long time. And at home, she discovers Dad has a girlfriend, no, a fiancee that he intends to marry soon. She has a lot on her plate. Still, at points in this story, I can't help feeling that she's a bit of a spoiled brat, which made me feel less sympathy for her than I expected to.

And though James is rehospitalized, we never find out what happened to him in the first place. He has survived the death of an older brother, but we don't know why he feels so guilty. ( )

In her junior year of high school, Naomi falls down the stairs, hits her head, and loses four years of memories. She recovers slowly - still tired and extra sensitive to light - and returns to school, but the memories don't come back, so she relies on her dad, her yearbook co-editor and friend Will, and her boyfriend Ace to tell her, essentially, who she is - or who she used to be.

Naomi's story is divided into three sections (I was, I am, I will) as she wades through high school without her memory - until, all at once, it does return (but she doesn't tell anyone right away). Even before she regained her memory, she broke up with Ace and started dating James, a senior new to their school; James was the one to see her fall and call 911, and he has a mysterious past of his own (nothing to do with her fall - his older brother died, and James has depression, and once attempted suicide).

In her new life, Naomi must rely on others, but also examine her own likes and dislikes, thoughts and feelings. When they are inconsistent with past behavior (as reported by others), she sometimes makes a change: she goes out for the school play, and she (eventually) reconnects with her mother, who is remarried and has a three-year-old daughter. (There is an extra layer of complication here, as Naomi was adopted from Russia.)

A fascinating premise, well executed.

Quotes

Each period had required me to be a slightly different person, and that was exhausting. (75)

[Will] was my only source of reliable information, though I was starting to question how reliable anyone was. Ask two people to tell you anything, you'll get two different versions....If you don't know anything for yourself, you can't be sure. (102)

I wondered if it was all that simple - if my memory never came back, maybe it was as easy as asking myself what I liked and what I didn't like. (126)

It's when you don't need something that you tend to lose it. (207)

An intimacy based on the trip more than the travelers... (240) ( )

3.5 Stars
CW: Attempted suicide, death of a sibling, mental health. ( )

That was a nice story. I liked the voice of the main character, and I thought the details related to head trauma were interesting. Though it would be easier to say it with spoilers, I'll just say, I'm very glad it turned out the way it did. Maybe it was a bit tidily done, but I liked the two characters so much, I was glad enough to see them happy anyway. I will be reading more of her books. ( )