The Fault in Our Memories

Memory is a tricky thing for "healthy" people.

My favorite movie is about memories.  And this quote has always stuck with me:

Memory is the selection of images, some elusive, others printed indelibly on the brain. Each image is like a thread, each thread woven together to make a tapestry of intricate texture. And the tapestry tells a story, and the story is our past.

It is the "selection" part of the brain on which the movie focuses.

In the case of some, however, there is no ability to select which memories will stay and which will go.  Memory loss is a frightening thing.  I have known people who have struggled with and suffered from memory loss.  And I am saddned to know three siblings who battle Early-onset Alzheimer's, each in their 30s, having already lost their father to the disease when they were children and young teens.

The Memory Book is the story of Sammie who battles Niemann-Pick disease, a disease I had not heard of prior to reading this book.  She writes this book with the hopes that her future self will remember when she cannot.

This book is so well done.  It is so very, very good.  I read this as part of group of readers considering books for the Printz award and I have to say that so far, this is my pick, for sure.

While I think that some will compare it to The Fault in Our Stars, I think that will only happen before they read it.  Because this does not seem to me like a "jump-on-the-teens-in-love-dying" bandwagon.

It is simply an excellent book.  Lara Avery has written a super book.