The Art of Forgetting

by Camille Noe Pagan

[Leah]

Marissa Rogers never wanted to be an alpha; beta suited her just fine. Taking charge without taking credit had always paid off: vaulting her to senior editor at a glossy magazine; keeping the peace with her critical, weight-obsessed mother; and enjoying the benefits of being best friends with gorgeous, charismatic, absolutely alpha Julia Ferrar. And then Julia gets hit by a cab. She survives with minor obvious injuries, but brain damage steals her memory and alters her personality, possibly forever. Suddenly, Marissa is thrown into the role of alpha friend. As Julia struggles to regain her memory- dredging up issues Marissa would rather forget, including the fact that Julia asked her to abandon the love of her life ten years ago- Marissa’s own equilibrium is shaken. With the help of a dozen girls, she reluctantly agrees to coach in an after-school running program. There, Marissa uncovers her inner confidence and finds the courage to reexamine her past and take control of her future.

I must admit, every now and again I’ll read a book based purely on the cover. A pretty cover catches my eye way more than a catchy synopsis ever could because, generally, the first thing I see if the book cover. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still read books with ugly covers, but I’m generally a cover snob and I adore a beautiful cover. The cover for The Art of Forgetting caught my eye as soon as I saw it. It is absolutely stunning and you’d be hard pressed to find somebody that doesn’t stop and look at the cover. The cover shows a ballerina sitting on the floor, head hunched over, reaching her toes. It so eye-catching but it’s also so understated but it’s effective. I would buy this book just for the cover. So anyway, I decided to give it a read, because a book with that cover has to be good, right?! Right? Right.

The Art of Forgetting is one of those books that makes you think. It asks a lot of brilliant questions about how you would cope should someone you know and love suffer something as horrifying as a brain injury and how it changes you as a person, as well as the person it originally affected. And let me tell you, the book doesn’t pull any punches because we’re barely a few pages in when Julia is hit by a cab. It’s sort of like being in the twilight zone; one minute Marissa is watching her friend cross the road with a bunch of flowers in her hand and the next she’s being mown down by a yellow taxicab. It’s surreal, it’s shocking and it lets us dive right into the story. I did wonder where the story was going to go, whether it was going to take a What Alice Forgot effect and see if Julia is able to recuperate her memories and go back to being the person she was going to be, but in actuality whilst the book does focus on Julia’s trauma, the book’s real focus is on what Julia’s trauma does to Marissa and Marissa and Julia’s friendship.

I found the plot fascinating because I didn’t read the synopsis prior to starting the book so my preconceived thoughts were based on two things: the title and the cover so I was surprised to find Marissa narrating the story, as I’d assumed it would be whomever suffered the brain injury and I liked that the focus was more on Marissa. Much like Emily Giffin’s novel Something Borrowed, the friendship between Marissa and Julia is very similar to that of Rachel and Darcy and while they’re undoubtedly best friends there is an ounce of toxic friendship in there. The way Julia manipulated Marissa at times was very reminiscent of SoBo, right or wrong, what kind of a friend makes you break up with who you perceive could be the love of your life? And it’s flashbacks like that that show us the real Julia, the one before the accident. Marissa certainly came into her own after Julia moved to Ann Arbor to get on with her rehab and it was good to see her move out of Julia’s shadow and have to make herself more of a life than she had.

I liked Marissa. It did seem like most of the time she was happy to let Julia lead the way and her reticence to being the alpha between her and her best friend endeared her to me immediately. She seemed very real and down to Earth and I liked how she dealt with her mother who continually pulled her down and how she dealt with Julia after her accident when Julia got angry easily and forgot who she was. As for Julia, I must admit, I was never entirely convinced by her. The only time I felt any genuine affection for Julia was on the very last page. Until that point she was either dealing majorly with her trauma (although that doesn’t mean she wasn’t on that last page) or she was just being a bit of a shady friend. Naomi, Marissa’s boss and friend, was another character I enjoyed and I loved how easily she and Marissa got on with each other. I absolutely adored Marissa’s boyfriend Dave. He was such a rock and such a wonderful man. For the most part I liked the characters, the only one I had a question mark over, bar Julia, was Marissa’s mother who was uptight and a bit mean to her daughter.

What I particularly liked about the novel was the Take The Lead group Marissa helped coach with her work colleague (and boss) Naomi. I’ve no idea if it’s a real thing, teaching young kids about life and helping them run a 5k race, but if it’s not it should be because I found it inspiring. I know it was fiction but I loved how the class bully came to learn that bullying wasn’t right and that the larger girl in class was the sparkliest and most upbeat and didn’t necessarily care what people said about her. I thought Camille Pae Nogan presented Julia’s brain injury perfectly, with the right mix of medical terms and real world terms to make it easy to understand what had happened to her and why her personality could change so much moment from moment. I thought The Art of Forgetting was just a simply wonderful novel. I was worried Marissa might have been tempted to go back to Nathan her ex despite having Dave, but I felt that was resolved nicely. The book was immensely readable and one that will stay with me for a long while after I’ve finished it. I have no faults for the novel, and that’s the best sign there is for a novel. I’ve had such a good run of books lately and The Art of Forgetting is one of the best of the bunch!