Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
I read the book Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. It was published in 2007 by Gabrielle Zevin. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac was written to give readers an idea of what it would be like to erase your past and start all over. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac teaches the life lesson that you shouldn’t worry about the past and live for the moment. The book overall, is not a classic mystery.

In the book, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, Naomi is an adopted girl who dove down her college stairs to catch the yearbook camera. She hit her head, causing her to have amnesia. Naomi lost all of her memory after the sixth grade, so she soon broke up with her boyfriend Ace. She quit the yearbook committee (though she used to love it). Her best friend Will was hiding his feelings from Naomi, and they got into an argument over her new mysterious boyfriend James and were on bad terms basically until James was out of the picture. Naomi had to find out about her parents’ divorce and remarriages all over again.

In my opinion, this book should not have been classified as a mystery; the only mystery in the book was how Naomi fell down the stairs. The book veered off into different directions in weird ways. It made me feel like I had amnesia while I was reading it. The author did have a message that was shown in a slow, tame, bland way. Usually when I’m done reading a good book, I can remember almost everything, but this book leaves my mind almost blank.

Zevin made a point that you should live for the future. She used the entire span of the book to prove her point, and she made a good one. She created a variety of characters. The character James, who formerly lost his mind and almost killed himself over his ex-girlfriend. Naomi’s character didn’t have an exact personality because of her changes in feelings over the course of her amnesia. I only recommend a book that I think is great to people and this is not one of them.

Overall, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac will leave you thinking about what life would be like if you could just forget a whole part of it. This book was nearly mind-numbing. Zevin is a highly praised writer who was not at the top of her game when she wrote this book.