Memory

by Margaret Mahy

On the fifth anniversary of his older sister's death, nineteen-year-old Jonny Dart, troubled by feelings of guilt and an imperfect memory of the event, goes in search of the only other witness to the fatal accident and, through a chance meeting with a sen

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction, Fantasy, Childrens, Coming Of Age, Contemporary, Teen

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Margaret Mahy was a well-known New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. While the plots of many of her books have strong supernatural elements, her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up.

Her books The Haunting and The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance both received the Carnegie Medal of the British Library Association. There have 100 children's books, 40 novels, and 20 collections of her stories published. Among her children's books, A Lion in the Meadow and The Seven Chinese Brothers and The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate are considered national classics. Her novels have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Catalan and Afrikaans. In addition, some stories have been translated into Russian, Chinese and Icelandic.

For her contributions to children's literature she was made a member of the Order of New Zealand. The Margaret Mahy Medal Award was established by the New Zealand Children's Book Foundation in 1991 to provide recognition of excellence in children's literature, publishing and literacy in New Zealand. In 2006 she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award (known as the Little Nobel Prize) in recognition of a "lasting contribution to children's literature".

Margaret Mahy died on 23 July 2012.

On 29 April 2013, New Zealand’s top honour for children’s books was renamed the New Zealand Post Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret...

Reviews

[P.D.R. Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Memory' is a great Mahy novel. Typically she tells a good story, makes the reader laugh and cry and leaves the reader with plenty to think about. The problems she examines in 'Memory' are ones teenagers might well be dealing with, and as she helps her hero through his problem she also shows the reader how to cope and hope.

Old Sophie West has trouble with her memory now she is developing Alzheimer's. It makes her vulnerable. Jonny might be nineteen but he is having a terrible time with his memories of a particular incident and how other around him coped. He isn't coping, has dropped out, gets drunk. keeps getting into fights. Now he is having to rescue Sophia from her problems. Bonny shared that incident but she has found a way forward. Together they all find a way out of those memories and into making better ones in a lovely muddley and very human way.

It's a lovely read and not just for YA. Adults will enjoy this novel too.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this for $.25 at the Brookline Public Library. It had been withdrawn from the YA shelves and I’d like to know WHY! A wonderful book which brings home the reality of Alzheimer’s. Nice exploration of the complex nature of memory. I remember Margaret Mahy (a New Zealander) from my CLNE (Children’s Literature New England) days; she’s quite a character with an irreverent sense of humor.

[Allison Cudney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book, Mahy was very poetic with her writing and simple. I liked the simplicity of the book, it is simply about finding yourself. Its the island of misfit toys in a book. Her ability to create characters which are so tragic and yet so relatable is amazing. Jonny is a sad character of desperation, clinging to one last shred of hope. This comes in an unexpected way, through an old lady named Sophie. Turns out that he can solve his problems when he helps someone else. I liked the concept that sometimes it takes looking outside of yourself to find out what you are made of. Though his sisters death was tragic, he is able to figure things out, even if it took him five years to figure things out. I feel like this book is about hope. With rich writing and great characters, I highly recommend this book!

[Mimi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just super. Fun, thoughtful, and layered. The kind of book you read in school. It's about growing up, life, family and friendship, and grappling with the past, featuring washed up, burnt out former child commercial star and tap dancer Jonny Dart, who saw his sister die.
It unfortunately suffers from an unmemorable title and cover. The book is way better than either of these or its anonymity suggest. The first book I've read by a Kiwi author or set in New Zealand.

[St0rm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The wordplay in this book is delightful. Sometimes hilarious, always touching, it was a pleasure spending a day with Mahy again.

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel examines two aspects of memory through the main characters, 19 year old Jonny and an elderly woman, Sophie, suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. Jonny has been haunted for the last five years by the experience of witnessing his elder sister's death. His life has been derailed into booze and getting into fights, and on the anniversary of Janine's death he goes looking for the other witness, Janine's best friend Bonny, wanting to check whether his memory is really accurate. However, he encounters Sophie instead and soon finds himself becoming her caregiver despite his better judgement, especially when it seems she is being swindled by someone who is posing as her landlord.

As with other Mahy fiction, the characters are well fleshed out. The portrayal of Alzheimer's is all too convincing. A touching relationship develops as Jonny finds someone who needs him and in caring for her he gradually moves away from obsession with his own troubles, ironically finding answers to those along the way.

The book would be a good way of explaining this form of dementia to its original age range audience, but I think they would probably find the 1980s teenage trappings - a tape-based Walkman that Jonny relies on to blot out his surroundings being chief among them - and the lack of today's mobile phone culture too dated, which is a pity. I also found the story dragged a bit in the middle before it built up steam for the ending chapters, and I'm not convinced by the mild results of Jonny's dramatic action.

As far as the authorial decision to make two of the character names Jonny and Bonny, perhaps this is meant to drive home the way he has projected so much of his own fantasies onto his sister's friend so that she is almost an aspect of himself, but that could be reading too much into it. But if not it is an odd naming choice. On balance, a 3-star read.

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is Mahy's masterpiece. It's not her most well-known book, but it's the one that's stuck with me.

Aged 14, Jonny Dart watched his sister fall to her death from a cliff face. Five years later, he's trying to find the one other person who saw it happen - his sister's best friend, Bonny Benedicta - so he can check whether the way he remembers Janine's fall is the way it happened. But he's doing it by arriving drunk at Bonny's adoptive parents' out-of-town house fresh from a fistfight at a pub and a yelling match with his father outside the police station. He finds and scrawls down Bonnie's address on his hand, but when he wakes up a few hours later, face down in a flowerbed on a traffic island, his memory of this is gone. He keep searching for Bonny, but the person he finds is Sophie - an elderly woman who is having her own problems with memories.

For reasons hard to explain, Jonny ends out camping out at Sophie's dilapidated home: cleaning out the fridge, sorting out the cats, bathing the fragile old woman, and gradually learning her story, every memory of the past reclaimed but lacking context; every impression of the present untrustworthy and confused. Sophie's memory won't come back. But while Jonny is with her, he begins to piece the last five years together in a way that helps his life make a new kind of sense:

In the beginning of this story, swollen with apparitions, he had stalked through the city and it had given in to him - had offered Bonny and Nev, to match up with the ghosts of memory. Exorcising these ghosts, he was set free of them at last. Yet he had lost something too, for part of their substance had come out of him in the first place. Besides, being haunted had had a seductive glamour about it. Jonny had seen there was a chance to escape from the desolate patches of life by becoming a demon, impervious to pain, but in the end he had dwindled back to being something more ordinary, and was glad to be restored.

That word 'ordinary' is important. Jonny's not ordinary. He saw his sister die in front of him. He moved in with a woman struck down with Alzheimer's on a whim. And yet, in the world of YA, he is normal. He's not gifted with extraordinary powers, or set upon a quest on which he will find hidden depths, or a symbol of youthful alienation or rampant capitalism or technological revolution. Instead, he is what an arty 19 year-old in Christchurch in the mid 1980s was like; floppy black hat, floppy fringe, op-shop blazer, drinking cheap beer and cheaper wine in pubs with his mates, playing back-up drum in an underground band, suffering from a crush on an older girl he knew years ago ... and not quite sure where any of this is going.

What's also not normal or ordinary is the extraordinarily tender relationship Mahy draws up between Sophie and Jonny. This is the book that showed me that growing old may be terrifying - a time when electrical appliances turn on you, when family become strange to you, when the past is closer than the present. When you might be alone, and no-one knows or particularly cares. Mahy brings Jonny into Sophie's life in a way that's not cloying or message-laden. It's touching, funny, thought-provoking, and utterly original.

[Denver · Rating 2 out of 5]

I decided to read this book because i was still yet to read a novel by the popular author, Margaret Mahy. This was somewhat a disappointment because i've heard that she is amazing writer, but i didn't enjoy this book as much as i expected to.

This book is set during the anniversary of the death of Johnny's twin. After consuming a questionable amount of alcohol, he goes in search of the only other witness to her death, as his memory only goes so far. However, instead he finds an elderly woman, Sophie, who helps him in a strange way let go of his ghosts. This book completes the category: a book written by a New Zealander. I haven't read many novels of this category, probably because by chance, the novels i read don't happen to be written by New Zealand authors.

“This was the hidden machinery of life, not a clean, clinical well-oiled engine, monitored by a thousand meticulous dials, but a crazy, stumbling contraption made up of strange things roughly fitted together – things like a huge water tap, the dogleg stairs, cheese in the soap dish, and a crocheted tea cosy stiff with dirt and topped by a doll’s broken face.” I love this quote because it pretty much sums up an interesting opinion on life: it is not some perfect and glamorous existence, but can sometimes feel strange, rough and thrown together in a strange way.

Something i learned from this book is that we should enjoy the time we have with our loved ones, because they can be taken away in a second. Johnny's dead twin is an example of the tragic accidents that can occur at anytime, to anyone.

An character i found interesting was Sophie. She was an elderly woman, alone with Alzheimer's. Why would Mahy create this kind of character to save Johnny? I think she made Sophie so vulnerable so that Johnny could learn to take care of someone else, and at the same time, take care of himself.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel reads like a literary thriller.

When Johnny Dark - former child tap star, fantasist and budding rapist - follows a series of signs from the universe, he ends up in a crazy house filled with false teeth, outsized taps, swarms of live cats and corpses of dead blackbirds. Will he find the help he needs to unravel his secret shame?

I finished this wanting more of Johnny and his self-selected Oracles, mad old Sophie and the implacably sane Bonny. I love mysteries with apparently low stakes (the most dramatic action sequence in the book is the hero hurling himself from a first-floor balcony and dislocating his shoulder). The territory of contemporary YA fiction might suggest this isn't a popular view, at least amongst publishers. I guess it's a good thing I'm not a publisher.

Any road up, for the life of me I can't imagine this eccentric, pitiless story being published now. This makes me sad and also happy that I've discovered Margaret Mahy's writing. So far, I've only read two of her books (The Changeover and this one). The library I work in has an entire shelf full of them, lucky me.

[Masha Toit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Margaret Mahy, and this one is amazing.

A 19 year old Jonny spends the anniversary of his sister's death trying to forget, getting drunk and picking fights. He encounters Sophie, an old woman who can only forget - she suffers from Alzheimers. Jonny is sucked into Sophie's chaotic world, partly mesmerized by the sheer craziness, partly out of concern for her vulnerability.

The story keeps tipping between hilarity and - I dont want to say horror because that is too strong, but still, a frightening look at what can happen when an old person lives by themselves without anyone to care for them. Cheese in the soap dish, and burns on the ironing board. Wonderful book.

[Chana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the magical thinking and the idea of following signs. It reminded me of Alice Hoffman's books in this way. But it was edgier because the main character was a young male, someone searching for his way and looking for signs in the music and in the streets. He finds himself through someone else who is lost, an old lady in the fog of Alzheimer's. Part of this finding himself has to do with coming to terms with childhood tragedy and fears. It is a pretty good book.

[Risa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was odd and lovely, like so many of Mahy's books; I loved her unusual prose, as always, and enjoyed the unconventional unfolding of this plot. I also loved the way Mahy generates mystery about whether what's happening is supernatural or merely the skewed reality of her protagonist.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very talented writer.

[Len · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully written story that depicts two lives tortured in different ways by memory. It is told with great sympathy and just the right level of humour to stop the whole tale slipping into tragedy.

Teenager Jonny has been tearing himself apart emotionally, tortured by the memory of the accidental death of his older sister in a cliff fall. Deep within himself he has never been certain that his parents haven't blamed him for failing to save her and in his mind he has been turning this into a suspicion that perhaps his sister did not fall, he pushed her. The undeserved feeling of guilt has been destroying his life, leaving him at nineteen unemployed and perhaps mentally unemployable, too fond of easing his assaulted conscience with alcohol, and more and more too ready to turn to violence as an outlet for his frustrations. In short his life has become a mess until, one night wandering the streets thoroughly drunk, he comes across an old lady wheeling a shopping trolley. He doesn't know but when he accompanies her back to her home his whole life is about to change.

Poor Sophie is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's. Her memory is erratic leaving her in a world where the past always intrudes on a hazy present. In her earlier life she had lived comfortably, her late husband running his own successful business. But they were childless and now she is alone and trying to navigate through a world that is full of confusion and uncertainties. Jonny becomes her guardian angel and protector and in doing so resurrects himself.

The plot is perhaps a little too coincidental in having Jonny's sister's best friend, Bonny, just happening to live in the house next door to old Sophie and in so doing ignites some brief but quickly suppressed lustful feelings in his breast – it all turns out well courtesy of Bonny's preparedness to keep everything quiet and not press charges; and Jonny's great enemy from his schooldays, the unreformed bully Nev, lives around the corner with his bunch of violent mates. Both play small parts in filling out Jonny's story, though there is one element that seems misplaced. The story is set in New Zealand and, as an unnecessary theme that leads nowhere in the end, the author explains Bonny and her sister's roles as adopted part Maori children of Pakeha parents. Bonny's sister has become active in supporting Maori rights of land ownership but very little is made of it and none of it affects Jonny or Sophie's story.

Having said that, the main tales of Jonny and Sophie are superbly told and their lives come together to make a fascinating and uplifting whole in which the promise of a future is more important than distorted memories of the past.

[Clay · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is not always easy to cope with your fears and anxieties. Memory by Margaret Mahy demonstrates this, and follows Jonny Dart, a teenage boy who is still struggling with his older sister’s death. Jonny has to face his fears when he encounters his childhood bully, Nev Fowler, at the Colville Pub. Nev sits down at Jonny’s table and starts talking to him as if they have always been good friends, but throughout the whole conversation, Jonny can only think of how Nev was when they were children: “Nev lifted his glass towards Jonny as if toasting him, but it was the old, threatening Nev that looked over the foam at him.” However, near the end of the conversation, Jonny realises that the memories he had of Nev were only memories: “Jonny…had imagined that every mark, every mole, every hair, even the texture of Nev’s skin would be fixed in his memory forever but after all he had forgotten that odd, lowering effect.” The way that Jonny faces this situation shows the reader that people can grow out of their fears. This demonstrates that our own fears and anxieties only have as much power over us as we allow them to have, and that we can defeat them. Jonny’s ability to overcome this fear in a short period of time was essential to his personal growth. We all have to face our fears eventually, and while they may seem incredibly daunting when it comes to it, getting over them is essential to our own personal development. Sometimes, facing our fears and anxieties may seem like something we may never be able to achieve and that your fears will always control you, however the sooner you face them, the sooner you will realise that, like Jonny, you can subdue them.

[Roger Evans]

Many teen readers- those who have comfortable home lives, self confidence and a good circle of friends- may not identify easily with the narrative of this book. These sorts of things do not happen in "real life"
However for those going through the anguish of struggling to cope with social disjunct, who walk the roads at night escaping reality while searching desperately for answers, this book may be a compelling read. It was for me- even as an adult reliving very similar memories.
The unanswered questions of childhood , the teen turmoil of self searching and self doubt, meet their counterfoil in the fading memories of alzheimers, as Johnny struggles to come to terms with life, and learns to deal with reality. His sister's former friend Bonnie represents a more stable normality; what Johnny saw as a magical existence she regarded merely as a game. The novel ends with the first steps of resolution as both renegotiate the disparate past in terms of an uncertain future.
I really identified with this book- because in many ways it retold my own story. Very well written, by one of New Zealand's best writers.

[Roberta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a beautiful story. It has a lot in common with some other Margaret Mahy books, mainly how the young and old fail to communicate.

This is a very simple story. Jonny runs into an old lady who needs help and he does his best to help her. But it is also a very complicated story. I find strong elements of five or six of the plots listed in Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories:
Overcoming the monster
Rags to Riches
The Quest
Voyage and Return
Comedy
Tragedy
Rebirth

Something that I notice about many books, and it is not a reflection on the author and it doesn't affect the rating, is that the cover artist put something on the cover that doesn't quite match something that is described in the book. It's not a big deal - just one of my pet peeves.

[Isabelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is my first pre adolescent book by Margaret Mary and I was a bit disappointed.
I have always like the lightness and delight I find in her books for young children. Maybe I was expecting something similar.
I found the pace too slow, some things a little hard to believe... But I think I am a little biased, and expected it too much to be like books for young children.
This is a story of a young man who is trying to deal with grief and guilt and out of not being able to, turns to violence and alcohol and by chance, he meets Sophie, an older woman who suffers from memory loss.
Somehow, the meeting helps them both...

[Rachel B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the character of Sophie, and the friendship between her and Jonny. I thought Jonny's storyline was a little lacking and unbelievable, though. It seemed at times that he was dealing with mental illness, even.

There honestly wasn't much of a plot to propel forward.

There were several sexual references that would be appropriate enough for a teen, but not so much for a grade-schooler, so I don't know why so many people have it categorized as a children's book.

There was also some mild profanity, and the flippant use of God's name as an exclamation.

It wasn't the most terrible read, but it also wasn't good enough to recommend to others.

[Katy Horning · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this when it first came out in 1987, and enjoyed reading it again, especially now that I’m older. It was unusual for a young adult novel when it was first published because the protagonist is 19 years old, and the book deals with his friendship with an older woman who has Alzheimer’s. Like most of Mahy’s novels it’s deep, witty, and populated with singular characters who sometimes shock us with their actions and their candor. I’m sorry this book has gone out of print and has fallen off the radar. It’s a book I think a lot of adults would enjoy today, perhaps even more than teens.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant.

"New Adult" before the term NA was invented. Full of the complex ideas that college age kids are often eager to ponder, and able to explore before they have the demands of their own families & careers... but too complex for younger teens. Also good for parents & educators of same... what is it like to be hung up on a memory of one's childhood and unable to move on?

Adults will also develop a better sense of what it's like to have Alzheimer's, and how important it is to encourage young people to train as caregivers and to establish residences.

[Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like a lot of Margaret Mahy's books for adults, this focuses on interpersonal relationships and feels altogether gritty and full of real human beings.

It starts slowly, and I ended up putting it down for a few weeks, but after picking it back up it hooked me very quickly and I finished it in two days. Worth it!

[Elise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting story with good development.

[Faye Maclennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read and Sophie for me hit a personal reality.

[Samuel Mendes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quite possibly the worst book I've read in my life. Drags on with no very interesting story, and the characters are extremely stale. With little reason to want to read it. Would not recommend

[Cora Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not 100% sure if anything really happened but loved it anyway

[Tiffany Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

This touching story is about a boy named Johnny who is grieving the loss of his younger sister. One night he was drinking heavily when he wandered into the park at midnight in search of his sister’s best friend. On his drunken walk, he stumbles into an old woman who has Alzheimer’s disease and mistakes him for her beloved cousin. Jonny goes with her back to her house only to realize that she has been taken advantage of by a gangster. He takes initiative and becomes this old woman’s caregiver. Their lives were forever changed after meeting each other.

I personally really enjoyed reading this story. While it was still an exciting mystery novel, it was also really heartbreaking to get a glimpse at what can happen if an elderly person is left without anyone to look after them. This story has a depressing subject, but I also found it to be heartwarming and inspiring.

[Evalangui · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Memory' is a pretty short novel about a pretty messed up kid, Jonny, who's now not a kid any longer but cannot move on from his sister's accidental death, which he witnessed and suspects he's responsible for, somehow. To puzzle together what happened that day in the cliff, he sets off to look for Bonnie, his sister's best friend and finds Sophie, instead, an old woman with advanced alzheimer's. Sophie and Jonny sort of adopt each other, since Jonny cannot seem to leave Sophy to her disastrous life and sticks around to help her out.

It's a wandering plot, in fact, not much happens outside Jonny's head, but Mahy has a gift for making the everyday strange and new, rediscovering for us the world we inhabit and the descriptions of a true storyteller.

[Anika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memory by Margaret Mahy is about a boy called Johnny who is struggling with his life after school and his sister's death. Throughout the book, he meets an old lady called Sophie who remembers nothing about her life. The bond between two people escaping their past helps both of them deal with their grief and problems. My favorite part of the book is when you see how they heal each other by looking after the other. I recommend this book to anyone going through grief or trying to figure out who they are.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

She won an award for this book for a good reason, she's a genius. Most of the memorable quotes/sentences I remember incorrectly that are pure genius come from her or Charles Dickens. They can describe a scene or a person or a feeling as if it is there in front of you - "Street lights looked down at him from long, slender necks of concrete, curving over at the top as if light were too great a burden to be held."