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My Name Is Memory
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My Name is Memory: Book 1

My Name Is Memory (2010) (edit title/settings)

by Ann Brashares (Author) (edit contributors)

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From the New York Times bestselling author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and The Last Summer (of You and Me) comes an imaginative, inspired, magical book-a love story that lasts more than a lifetime. Daniel has spent centuries falling in love with the same girl. Life after... read more

Summary edit see section history

Daniel has spent centuries falling in love with the same girl. Life after life, crossing continents and dynasties, he and Sophia (despite her changing name and form) have been drawn together-and he remembers it all. Daniel has "the memory", the ability to recall past lives and recognize souls... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Daniel has spent centuries falling in love with the same girl. Life after life, crossing continents and dynasties, he and Sophia (despite her changing name and form) have been drawn together-and he remembers it all. Daniel has "the memory", the ability to recall past lives and recognize souls of those he's previously known. It is a gift and a curse. For all the times that he and Sophia have been drawn together throughout history, they have also been torn painfully, fatally, apart. A love always too short.

Interwoven through Sophia and Daniel's unfolding present day relationship are glimpses of their expansive history together. From 552 Asia Minor to 1918 England and 1972 Virginia, the two souls share a long and sometimes torturous path of seeking each other time and time again. But just when young Sophia (now "Lucy" in the present) finally begins to awaken to the secret of their shared past, to understand the true reason for the strength of their attraction, the mysterious force that has always torn them apart reappears. Ultimately, they must come to understand what stands in the way of their love if they are ever to spend a lifetime together.

A magical, suspenseful, heartbreaking story of true love; My Name is Memory proves the power and endurance of a union that was meant to be. "Well. It's a strange thing," I explained. "With each birth your body starts out fresh and mostly blank, but then you print yourself on it over time. You hold onto old experiences: injuries, injustices, and great love affairs, too." I glanced up at Sophia. "And you hold them in your joints and your organs and wear them on your skin."

Preview:

"You do." She was giving me that same look of indulgence, but it was less confident.
"We all do."
"Because we live again and again?"
"Most of us."
"Not all of us?" Her indulgence showed more signs of genuinely wanting to know.
"Some live only once. Some a very few times. And some just go on and on and on."
"Why?"
I put my head back on my pillow. "That is hard to explain. I'm not sure I really know."
"And you?"
"I've lived many times."
"And you remember them?"
"Yes. That's where I'm different than most people."
"I'll say. And what about me?" She looked like she wasn't going to believe the answer, but slightly feared it anyway.
"You've also lived many times. But your memory is just average."
"Clearly." She laughed. "Have you known me for all of them?"
"I've tried. But no, not all."
"And why can't I remember?"
"You can more than you think. Those memories are in there somewhere. You act on them in ways you don't realized. They determine how you respond to people, the things you love and the things you fear. A lot of our irrational behavior would look more rational if you could see it in the context of your whole long life."
It was amazing the things I was will to tell her if she was willing to listen, and she was. I touched the hem of her sleeve. "I know enough about you to know you love horses and you probably dream about them. You probably dream of the desert sometimes and maybe taking a bath outdoors. Your nightmares are usually about fire. You have problems with your voice and your throat sometimes--that was always your weak spot . . ."
Her face was rapt. "Why?"
"You were strangled a long time ago."
Her alarm was a mix of real and pretend. "By whom?"
"Your husband."
"Awful. Why did I marry him?"
"You didn't have a choice."
"And you knew this man?"
"He was my brother."
"Long dead, I hope."
"Yes, but bearing a grudge through history, I fear."
I could see by her face, she was trying to figure out where to put all of this. "Are you a psychic?" she asked.
I smiled and shook my head. "Although most psychics, if they are any good, do have some memory of old lives. And so do most of the people we consider insane. An asylum is about the densest concentration of people with partial memory you will ever find. They get flashes and visions, but usually not in the right order."
She looked at me sympathetically, wondering if that's where I belonged. "Is that what you do?"
"No. I remember everything."

Characters/People edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “You forget your victories, but you remember the losses. (p79)”
    Lucy's father
  • “The air was so humid you could smell it and hear it and touch it and see it and nearly chew on it.”
    Daniel
  • “'...Haven't you heard anything I've said to you? You might think I'm another pathetic boy in your care, and I am. But you are everything to me.' '...Please try to believe me,' I said. 'This didn't happen by accident. You have been with me from the very first life. You are my first memory every time, the single thread in all of my lives. It's you who makes me a person.' (page 164-165)”
    Daniel
  • “I felt frustrated all of a sudden. I pointed to my chest. 'This is not me. This body is breaking down, but I am not.' I didn't want her look of sympathy. I hated to be weak in front of her. 'I promise you. I will be healthy again, and I will find you.' (page 170)”
    Daniel
  • “My maternal grandfather, Joseph, from our old street in Alabama, was dying. Molly, my mother, decided to put him in hospice close to where we lived....I wasn't as much moved by my feelings toward him as by my mother's feelings toward him. Her grief was thick all over the house. I remember thinking to myself, ‘It's all right. It's not that big a deal. You'll get another one.’ And yet somehow, even though it was the kind of thing I told myself all the time, it didn't seem exactly right. As long as I had been around, as much as I carried with me, I wanted to think I knew better than Molly, but I really didn't. I didn't know anything about love compared to Molly....I saw in my mother’s grief how she loved her father. She didn’t love him because he was her father, she loved him. She loved the kindnesses he had done her, the times they spent together. There was nothing abstract in the way she loved him or any of us. ‘You can get a new one,’ is what I thought, but I guess in a deeper way, I knew she couldn’t. (pages 214-215)”
    Daniel
  • “It was the rhythm of human enterprise to invent and worship some new approach, to fully reject it a generation later, to realize the need for it again a generation or two after that and then hastily reinvent it as new, usually without its original elegance. Scientists hated to look backward for anything.”
    Daniel
  • “I have seen beauty in countless things. I have fallen in love, and she is the one who endures. I killed her once and died for her many times and I still have nothing to show for it. I always search for her; I always remember her. I carry the hope that someday she will remember me.”
    Daniel
  • “I think you are over thinking this. If there was a movie about you it would be called I am Over Thinking This.”
    Marnie
  • “Touch was a rudimentary sense, not so variable and not likely to get better with repetition. If anything, repetition made you feel a little less with each touch. As he saw it, anticipation and habit were two of the nastiest parasites of old souls and long experience. They fed on repetition and crowded out your eager senses over time until nothing felt new anymore. There were things he wished he could touch for the first time again. (p. 114)”
    Daniel
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • “Love who you love while you have them. That’s all you can do. Let them go when you must. If you know how to love, you’ll never run out.”
    Highlighted by 106 Kindle customers
  • The path of your life can change in an instant. Not just the path of your life but the path of all your lives, the path of your soul. Whether you remember or not. It makes you want to think hard before you act.
    Highlighted by 79 Kindle customers
  • Those memories are in there somewhere. You act on them in ways you don’t realize. They determine how you respond to people, the things you love and the things you fear. A lot of our irrational behavior would look more rational if you could see it in the context of your whole long life.”
    Highlighted by 63 Kindle customers
  • “You remember what is lost, and you forget what’s right in front of you.”
    Highlighted by 54 Kindle customers
  • A loving soul was always more beautiful over the long haul, but actual prettiness was fleeting.
    Highlighted by 48 Kindle customers
  • Doubts, compromises, and disappointments little and big—those usually reside around the eyes, but there are no rules. The hopes usually lurk around the mouth, but so do bitterness and tenacity. A sense of humor is easy to spot around the eyebrows, and so is self-deception.
    Highlighted by 48 Kindle customers
  • He kissed her with everything, because loving a person was all you could do.
    Highlighted by 44 Kindle customers
  • “Please try to believe me,” I said. “This didn’t happen by accident. You have been with me from the very first life. You are my first memory every time, the single thread in all of my lives. It’s you who makes me a person.”
    Highlighted by 41 Kindle customers
  • There are short periods of joy you have to stretch through a lot of empty years, me more than most. You have to make them last as well as you can.
    Highlighted by 37 Kindle customers
  • Hope was the thing you picked to happen, and fear was the thing you picked not to happen, and often with him they blurred.
    Highlighted by 34 Kindle customers
Show all 19 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

I have lived more than a thousand years.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Hopewood, Virginia, 2004
North Africa, 541
Charlottesville, Virginia, 2006
Nicaea, Asia Minor, 552
Charlottesville, Virginia, 2006
Constantinople, 584
Hopewood, Virginia, 2006
Pergamum, Asia Minor, 773
Hopewood, Virginia, 2006
On The Way To Cappadocia, 776
Arlington, Virginia, 2006
Off The Coast Of Crete, 899
Charlottesville, Virginia, 2006
Charlottesville, Virginia, 2006
Hastonbury Hall, England, 1918
Charlottesville, Virginia, 2007
Hastonbury Hall, England, 1918
Washington, D.C., 2007
Hastonbury, Hall, England, 1918
Hopewood, Virginia, 2007
Hastonbury Hall, England, 1918
Hopewood, Virginia, 2007
Hastonbury Hall, England, 1919
Hythe, England, 2007
Belgian Congo, 1922
Hopewood, Virginia, 2007
St. Louis, Missouri, 1932
Hinesville, Georgia, 1968
Charlottesville, Virginia, 2008
Fairfax, Virginia, 1972
Tysons Corner Mall, Virginia, 2001
Hopewood, Virginia, 2008
Charlottesville, Virginia, 2009
Kolkata, India, 2009
Charlottesville, Virginia, 2009
Arlington, Virginia, 2009
Charlottesville, Virginia, 2009
Ixtapa, Mexico, 2009
Joluta, Mexico, 2009
Joluta, Mexico, 2009
Petacalco, Mexico, 2009
John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, 2009
Paro, Bhutan, 2009
New Orleans, Louisiana, 2009

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 1 of 1 in My Name is Memory. (standard series)
This is book 27 of 122 in Znanje - Knjiga dostupna svima. (community list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Ann Brashares (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Riverhead Books (Published by the Penguin Group)
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59448-758-3
Page Count: 324

Classification edit see section history

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

Suitable for an adult audience.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
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