Fun, easy read, perfect for summerJancee Dunn grew up in Chatham, New Jersey. She was a writer at Rolling Stone from 1989-2003, where she wrote twenty cover stories for the magazine. She has written for many different publications and was a veejay for MTV2 from 1996 until 2001. Her memoir "But Enough About Me," about her life as chronically nervous celebrity interviewer, came out in 2006. She and her husband live in Brooklyn, New York. (source: author website)
I first heard about this book last summer, as part of the Satellite Sisters summer reading list. It’s been on my TBR list for almost a year.
If you were a teenager in the eighties you will enjoy a brush up on 80’s pop culture while reading. The premise is fantastic – who doesn’t want to reminisce about what we have been told are the ‘best years of your life’?
After receiving news from her husband that their marriage is over, Lillian takes a leave of absence from her job and returns to her childhood home. She moves back into her childhood bedroom and is surrounded by memories of high school. Compounded with an upcoming high school reunion, Lillian starts to revisit memories and is forced to deal with the important relationships in her life. Lillian is a real character, flawed and quite likeable.
Jancee has one of the best websites I have visited, click here to view.
Click here to watch a video clip from her book launch (17 mins)
Type: Fiction, 276 pages, Hardcover
Synopsis: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?
Reviews:
“This disarmingly funny memoir… allows readers to live vicariously as Dunn reveals tricks for getting stars to spill.” – People
“Incredibly funny… I loved this book from start to finish” – Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep