The Forgetting by Sharon Cameron

I randomly pulled The Forgetting off my shelves with low expectations. I picked up this young adult dystopian story at my school's book fair a few years ago. I assumed that this would be a book I read purely in order to be able to recommend it to my students in the future. I read a lot of teen novels for that reason. I like having a big library in my head that I can pull from when kids ask me what they should read next. I assumed that this book would be like most of the ones I read for this purpose- entertaining, but not particularly special. Once I started reading, I was surprised to discover that I was hooked. I raced through the pages in the course of a few days and stayed entertained the whole way through. It's so nice when a book catches you by surprise like that, isn't it?

The plot focuses on a teenager named Nadia the Dyer's Daughter. She lives with her mother and sisters in Canaan, a town built behind stone walls that people are not permitted to go beyond. They live their lives simply, making what they need to survive and sharing with each other freely. They are led by a council that regulates their living patterns very closely, Everyone works, sleeps, and wakes at the designated times and there are a long list of rules and rituals to be observed. All of this structure is necessary due to what they call "The Forgetting."

Every twelve years, a mysterious phenomenon causes everyone in Canaan to lose all of their memories. They do not know what the phenomenon is or how to stop  it, so they simply live with it the best they can. All of the structure and rules built into their society are meant to combat it and help society reestablish itself after every cycle of forgetting. The most important measure the town takes to protect itself is the keeping of books. Each citizen of Canaan writes daily in a journal, which they keep on their bodies at all times. As their books are filled, they are stored in an archive. When a Forgetting comes, everyone rereads their books to remind themselves of who they are, and they go on living the best they can. Their original memories never return, so their books are all they have to maintain some form of identity.

Things are different, however, for Nadia. She doesn't forget. She is the only one she knows of that has completely intact memories, and she has suffered greatly for it. She remember all sorts of painful things, like how her father wrote himself out of their family during the last Forgetting. He falsified several books and abandoned his wife and daughters, then moved elsewhere in the town and started a new family. She also remembers how the days before the last Forgetting were chaotic and violent, with people giving in to all their basest desires and worst inclinations, since no one would remember what they did, including themselves, afterwards. She lives in fear of the next Forgetting and has taken several sneaky precautions to keep her family safe from all of the terror and potential abuses that come with a Forgetting. She has never told anyone she remembers, as her emotions surrounding what she knows are too difficult for her to articulate to anyone.

As the next Forgetting approaches, Nadia begins to notice some curious behavior from council members. As she thinks about what she sees, she begins to question the way Canaan runs. She wonders about how their way of life was originally organized and why more official efforts haven't been taken to stop the Forgetting, or at least to understand more about it. Her curious mind combined with her memories lead her to make some startling discoveries about her town. She realizes that her memories give her the power to change things, and maybe spare her family the pain and confusion of eternally forgetting each other. She will have to act quickly however, and be braver than she has ever been to make enough people believe things they can't remember about themselves and they way they live.

Looking at the reviews on Goodreads for this one, I found that opinions on it are very mixed. Some find it to be boring while others absolutely love it. I definitely fall into the latter camp here. I thought the story was intriguing and different and that plot points were unveiled at a good pace. I was always theorizing about what might be going on, which is the mark of an engaging story. I didn't immediately guess all of the twists either, which I am usually able to do with young adult dystopian novels. Cameron's prose was easy to read and had this nice, solemn quality to it that I enjoyed. I liked Nadia's character too; She was bold and logical, but at the same time introverted and quiet due to the weight of retaining her memories. She does have a romance with a character named Gray, and I thought it actually added to the story rather that detracted from it, as a lot of young adult romance subplots tend to do. If young adult dystopian novels are your thing, I would definitely recommend this one. It's not perfect by any means, but it is a level above a lot of the other stuff out there.

The highest praise that I can give The Forgetting is that immediately after reading it, I downloaded its sequel, The Knowing, onto my Kindle. It is extremely rare for me to actually want to read the sequels to young adult novels, but I wasn't ready to leave Canaan behind yet. There were still some things I was curious about learning, so I'm diving back in for more. For those wary of embarking on a new series, know that The Forgetting stands alone the way it is. It is a self-contained story with an ending. The Knowing is a companion to the novel, and it is set way in the future, making it a nice option for people that would like to continue on with the world. The fact that I am choosing to do so is a total surprise to me, but it's a very nice one. I started reading The Forgetting assuming it would go straight onto my donate pile. However, it ended up being a keeper.



Total Books Read in 2018: 23