My Name is Memory

My Name is Memory, by Ann Brashares.

When he first appeared at school there was a lot of commotion about him because he was extremely good-looking. He was tall and strong-boned and self-possessed, and his clothes were a little nicer than most other kids'. At first the coaches were sniffing around for him to play football because of his size, but he didn't pursue it. As it was a small town and a bored town and a hopeful town, kids talked and rumors started. The rumors were ennobling at first, but then he made some mistakes. He didn't show up at Melody Sanderson's Halloween party, even though she invited him personally in the hallway, and everyone saw it. He talked to Sonia Frye straight through the annual junior/senior picnic, even though she wan an untouchable freak to people like Melody. It was a delicate social ecosystem they lived in, and most people got scared off him by the first winter.

Except Lucy.

Ann Brashares is the author of the Traveling Pants series, as well as one or two other adult books, and this book was fascinating; it was about reincarnation, a subject that I find very interesting, and a boy named Daniel who has "The Memory" - he remembers every single one of his past lives. In most of his lives, he is destined to meet up with "Sophia," though she may have a different name in each life, and he has known her ever since the beginning. In this life, she takes the form of Lucy, a senior in high school, and he is the same age as her, so he moves to her town, once he finds her, and enrolls in her high school. They have a brief rendezvous at the end of her senior year, at a dance, and then she doesn't see him for another 2 or 3 years. At first she was a little freaked out, because he tells her all that he knows, but while she is a student at UVA in Charlottesville, she comes to term with it, and then seeks to find Daniel again.

The ending was really open-ended, and I really hope there is a sequel, since I want to find out what happens to these characters.

5 out of 5 stars if there's a sequel; 4 out of 5 stars if there is not.