By Jancee Dunn
Villard
As you may or may not know, I usually am not a fan of the modern novel, but every once and awhile an exception is made. One such exception would be Don’t You Forget About Me. I read Dunn’s Why Is My Mother Getting A Tattoo last year and absolutely loved it. So, I took the chance that her novel would be equally enjoyable…I was not disappointed. The book came out in 2008, around the same time that social networking sites started infiltrating our daily lives. Never, not even in high school, have I ever been subjected to such peer pressure as I have when it came to joining Facebook. I abstained. For one, I abhorred the narcissistic tone of such posts as “Rachel is going to the grocery store right now.” Well, Godspeed Rachel, but no one gives a fuck. Do I really need to know how boring Rachel’s life is…can’t she just wow me with the highlights? The other thing I despise is all the friend requests from people that, as luck would have it, happen to occupy the same building that you did for four years. Yes, I am talking about the high school reconnect request. Maybe I would consider joining Facebook if there was a “I don’t believe I said one word to you in high school, so why would I have something to say to you now…so friend request DENIED” button, but they don’t. Really, if you were so interested in someone from high school, you would have taken the steps to maintain or create any relationship prior to the invention of Facebook. So where am I going with this? Well, like Lillian, the main character in this tale, I believe these old high school “friends” are romanticizing their glory days and forgetting there was nothing glory about them. Maybe I am a negative Nellie, but I remember the pain of high school all to well. Not that I was tormented by mean girls or a target for ridicule, in fact, I was more of an under the radar crowd, but I remember the anxiety, the self loathing, the dread, the awkwardness…all the feelings that made high school downright uncomfortable. Forget About Me does a great job reconciling the discrepancy between the “peak-end” memories (term from the book) and the realities that were high school. I recommend it to anyone who wants a fun read or anyone looking for a self-help book on moving forward with life but really don’t want to shop the self-help aisle at the bookstore! For the record, I still have exactly four and half friends from high school that I still TALK to…not Facebook with, on a regular basis; Allison, Amy, Kate, Sharon, and Melissa. Melissa is the half mainly because I didn’t meet her until the end of senior year and really consider her more of a college friend. She was also the only friend of mine that went to our 10th high school reunion and she said it was a complete waste of time. Yeah, duh!
