Amnesia in Young Adult Fiction

Alison Waller

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

Waller explores different forms of memory loss in recent and contemporary young adult (YA) fiction, suggesting that amnesia provides important formal and thematic possibilities for understandings of literary adolescence and identity. The chapter examines the central place of autobiographical memory in scientific and general understandings of adolescence and interrogates the notion that only older people forget. Waller then provides an analysis of three YA novels – Margaret Mahy’s Memory (1987), Mary E. Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox (2007) and Cat Patrick’s Forgotten (2011), discussing the treatment of youthful and aging memory, relationships between mind, body and technologies, and non-realist explorations of repressed traumatic memory.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMemory in the Twenty-first Century
Subtitle of host publicationNew Critical Perspectives from the Sciences and Arts and Humanities.
EditorsSebastian Groes
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
Pages286-291
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Cite this