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 language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Memory in the Twenty-first Century |
| Subtitle of host publication | New Critical Perspectives from the Sciences and Arts and Humanities. |
| Editors | Sebastian Groes |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Pages | 286-291 |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 |