Review: Memoirs of A Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Memoirs of A Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. Says Bursztynski:

Memoirs Of A Teenage Amnesiac is Gabrielle Zevin’s second young adult novel. The first, Elsewhere, was a fantasy tale in which the heroine woke up in the afterlife and found it not too different from this world except you aged backwards and eventually returned as a baby. She hadn’t resolved her life when killed in a road accident and so needed to manage a coming-of-age while living backwards. An interesting idea and it seems to have worked, at least for the students at my school, who borrowed it frequently and enjoyed it.

This novel has another unusual idea for a coming-of-age story. What if you had to sort out a life you didn’t remember because a head trauma had knocked out the last four years of your life, from puberty onwards? Would you be the same person anyway?

The full review is here.