Don't You Forget About Me: A Novel | Jancee Dunn | Jancee Dunn's fiction is as winning as her...

Don't You Forget About Me: A Novel | Jancee Dunn | A funny but not caustic, seeing but not searing, look at personal history

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Don't You Forget A...

	Don't You Forget About Me: A Novel Jancee Dunn Villard, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

After earning rave reviews with her rock-and-roll memoir But Enough About Me, Jancee Dunn takes on fiction in this comically poignant debut, a perfect read for anyone who has ever looked back nostalgically and wondered what might have been.

At thirty-eight, Lillian Curtis is content with her life. She enjoys her routine as a producer for a talk show in New York City starring showbiz veteran Vi (?short for vibrant?) Barbour, a spirited senior. Lillian?s relationship with her husband is pleasant if no longer exciting. Most nights she is more than happy to come home to her apartment and crawl into her pajamas. Then she?s hit with a piece of shocking news: Her husband wants a divorce.

Blindsided, Lillian takes a leave of absence and moves back to her parents? home in suburban New Jersey. Nestled in her childhood bedroom, where Duran Duran and Squeeze posters still cover the walls, she finds high school memories a healing salve to her troubles. She hurtles backward into her teen years, driving too fast, digging up mix tapes, and tentatively reconciling with Dawn, a childhood friend she once betrayed. Punctuating her stroll down memory lane is an invitation to the Bethel Memorial High School class of 1988 twenty-year reunion. It just might be Lillian?s chance to reconnect with her long-lost boyfriend, Christian Somers, who is expected to attend. Will it be just like heaven?

Lillian discovers, as we all must, the pitfalls of glorifying the glory days, the mortification of failing as a thirtysomething adult, and the impossibility of fully recapturing the past. Don?t You Forget About Me is for anyone who looks back and wonders: What if?

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Jancee Dunn's fiction is as winning as her likable memoir

I thought Jancee Dunn's memoir (But Enough About Me: A Jersey Girl's Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous) was a very enjoyable read. Now with "Don't You Forget About Me," she quells any doubts about being a one-hit wonder. Her fiction is as winning as her non-fiction. It's a work steeped in 1980s memories. I'm five years older than the author, but the humor and insights resonated pitch-perfectly.

Dunn shows some neat inventive chops here - she creates a talk show hostess, Vi Barbour, with an impressive backstory - movies, books, TV shows, friends, ex-husbands, and B- through D-list guests with back stories as well. Very impressive stuff.

It's left to protagonist Lillian's older, introspective, brainy sister Ginny to provide the key insight: the yawning gap between Liilian's reverent memories of her halcyon days of high school vs. the reality ("You were miserable most of the time"). I think that'll resonate with more than a few readers.

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A funny but not caustic, seeing but not searing, look at personal history

Lillian Curtis is 38 --- and she's got the world on a string. She produces a talk show for a Virginia Graham wannabe, Vi Barbour, a lively senior with a penchant for loud nostalgia. Her husband is a nice guy; their relationship has lost some of its spark, but most nights Lillian is happy to crawl into her fluffy pajamas and slippers and lock her door against the craziness of Manhattan. But when she comes home one day to find her husband standing in the hallway earlier than usual, her entire life as she knows it comes to a crashing halt.

When he asks for a divorce, Lillian is lost and doesn't know where to turn. But home is home, no matter how old you are, and off to New Jersey she goes, to her childhood home, her parents and her memories of growing up. How they figure into her future she doesn't know, but this great jumping-off point is the beginning to DON'T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME (yes, like in the Simple Minds song from The Breakfast Club), Jancee Dunn's hilarious first novel.

Lillian ends up going to her high school reunion. This event, of course, drums up memories of all the high school madness that she has stored in her mind's yearbook. But when she has the opportunity to reconnect with her old boyfriend, Christian Somers, will there be Cure songs playing and romance in the air, or will it be the most humiliating event thus far? Jancee Dunn clearly remembers high school very well, and Dunn's attention to the wonderful details of everything from her first makeout session with Christian to the soundtrack of her nostalgic times is remarkable. It will draw any reader in to Lillian's adventure with a mixture of pathos and humanity that makes it unique.

As Lillian encounters both her younger self and hopes and dreams by living in her old bedroom --- existing as a daughter first and foremost to her retired parents, who have a rapid-fire schedule all their own --- she also encounters the failed dreams and new hopes of her high school classmates, especially those of Christian. In her mind, he is the perfect man, but will he uphold those desires and turn out to be all that? Lillian moves through these two very different milieus in a surprised and yet newly-awakened state, seeing things more for what they are than for what she wishes them to be.

With the vivid backdrop of both her New Jersey suburban past and the retiree's New Jersey suburban present, DON'T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME is a funny but not caustic, seeing but not searing, look at personal history --- what it means, how it shapes who you are and who you are to become, and how, despite the most awful of circumstances and the highest level of pain you think you can tolerate, life always has something else in store for you around the corner. And, with forgiveness but not forgetfulness, those lessons of the past can follow you into a whole new life, a pleasant reminder of how much more you are than you ever thought you could be.

--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

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Great!

A terrific book with great 80's references combined with funny and realistic depictions of life in NYC and New Jersey. Very thoughtful, and also very humorous, story about looking back 20 years after high school and figuring out how to move forward. Great fun.

I love this book!

I read this book in two days because, when I put it down, I kept wondering what was happening to Lillian. She is such a lovingly-created character that she draws you into her world. Most women have an old boyfriend they would like to go back and revisit or have a distorted view of their high-school years, so this was not only interesting to read but it also gave a gentle lesson in reality. I love the way Dunn writes and hope for another book real soon.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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