At Times, I Felt Like I Didn’t Even Recognize Myself: On Sophie Kinsella's Remember Me?

I was fourteen years old when I first read Remember Me?. The large iconic sunflower on the book’s front cover caught my eye one summer afternoon as I strolled through the books aisle of a wholesale warehouse while my mother shopped for vegetables and juice. I didn’t know it then, but I was looking right at the book that I would later consider one of my absolute favorites. Several years later, I still can’t pinpoint the precise reason why I felt so drawn to Kinsella’s novel. I can say, however, that the two very words of the title spoke so clearly to my desires at the time.

Growing up, friends and peers moved in and out of my life constantly. It started in the fall of the third grade when my best childhood friend moved away, and would continue up until high school. I attended a middle school none of my elementary school friends attended, and I was bracing myself to attend a high school none of my middle school friends would attend. Time after time, I had to rebuild my social ground, and being on the introverted side, I found it quite wearing and disorienting. I felt undeniably lonely, yet secretly frustrated at my peers for never remaining constant in my life, even though I knew they weren’t to blame. I was tired of not recognizing anybody, and in turn, nobody recognizing me. At times, I felt like I didn’t even recognize myself.

I’ll admit that I had this absurd recurring fantasy in which one day, when we were all older and I was successful and living abroad, I would visit my hometown, walk down the street and eye a group of my old peers laughing and joking to each other about their mundane lives and kids and jobs, then they would see me, too, and halt in their tracks. I’d strut up to them, jut my chin up high and say, “Remember me?” Then they would freak out and remember neglecting me and sob about their regret and swear never to ignore me again and then ask sheepishly if maybe they could work for me for the rest of their sorry little lives. I realize now that this rather vicious daydream of mine is foolish, cocky, and totally impractical, but back then, it was my driving force to be “better” than other people, to accomplish more and higher than anybody I’d ever known. I was The Little Engine that Wanted to Could, and I wanted it bad. So did, as it turned out, Lexi Smart, the protagonist of Remember Me?.

Glancing over the front cover of Remember Me?, I felt a heated medley of all these inner resentments churn and bubble within my heart. I just had to read it. I asked my mom if she was willing to buy it for me, and she did, since she was always happy for me to read on my own. I sat down on my bed that evening and cracked open my paperback copy, and thus marked my first step into the world of twenty-eight year old Lexi Smart, and boy, did I enjoy the ride. I enjoyed the ride so immensely that I would read it through another seven times over the following three years. I remember staying up late many summer nights just so I could relive Lexi’s tale of when she woke up one evening in a London hospital to a big surprise: herself.

Upon regaining consciousness, Lexi discovers that she has straight teeth, a toned body, amazing nails, and a business card that reads “Director” of the company for which she used to be a junior assistant manager. She lives in a trendy new loft with her handsome, multimillionaire husband, and has her own personal assistant. The doctor tells Lexi that she survived a car crash in which she lost memory of the past three years, so she has no idea how her life could change so dramatically. Her most recent memory was the night she ranked a “minus six…on a scale of one to ten”, when she was still twenty-five years old. She was just a week shy of a yearly bonus at her new job, was stood up by her boyfriend, and was preparing to attend her father’s funeral the following morning. She remembers lamenting desperately for her life to improve, and it seems that it has finally happened; as if by magic, she’s living her dream life.

Lexi tries to hold onto this glamorous image of her new life, but the more she learns, the more her life turns out to be not quite what she originally thought it to be. Her sweet, innocuous twelve year old sister is now a rebellious, swindling teenager; her lifelong friends insist that she is a “bitch boss from hell”; and her husband is in love only with Lexi’s businesslike façade. And on top of all that, she is apparently having an affair with her husband’s architect, Jon, who later confronts her about it. As Lexi slowly pieces together the past three years of her life, she comes to discover how and why these drastic changes in her life came to be. Once the bigger picture of her life materializes, Lexi must ultimately decide whether she wants to keep her present life or find the strength within her to change it to suit her own accord.

What really struck me about Remember Me?, even after my first time reading it, was that twenty-eight year old Lexi from before the car crash was secretly unhappy with this glamorous lifestyle, and it was an idea my then fourteen year old brain had trouble grasping. I didn’t understand fully why until I reread the novel years later. Yes, she was stinking rich, but she was unloved. Nobody really understood her. When she was being simply herself at twenty-five, she was dreadfully unhappy with current prospects of her life. She was fed up with always drawing the shortest straw, so she decided to undertake the most extreme of makeovers. She fostered an austere businesslike persona she thought all successful people had and used it to climb out of the hole she was in. She knew it wasn’t really her, but if that attitude was her ride to the top, she would hop in and floor it. She let it overtake her, and that was the mask her husband fell in love with. Reaching the summit was all she could think about, for reasons explained towards the end of the book, but in doing so, she lost perspective of other more important areas of her life. She had gone too far in her blind pursuits and ended up where she knew she didn’t belong, not deep down inside. It’s no wonder she sparked an affair with the architect. She was lonely.

Perhaps what struck me even more was that this memory loss what just what Lexi needed; perhaps the past, more genuine Lexi could offer a fresh perspective on her current lifestyle, a solution to her problem. Talk about a blessing in disguise.

All in all, Remember Me? is a fun and light read. It is definitely no literary classic, but it made me laugh to myself many times, and once it was over, it made me think about what kind of future I wanted to create for myself. I empathized greatly with Lexi, and eventually, I realized that I had a Lexi Smart within me as well, one who dreams of a better tomorrow, but may not quite know where to start.

At one point in the novel, Lexi explains, “I feel like I’ve been plonked in the middle of a map, with one of those big arrows pointing to me. ‘You Are Here.’ And what I want to know is, how did I get here?” This lost, confuzzled feeling is one I have felt many times, and this is always how it starts when we begin to question our own direction and motives. Remember Me? is about being and becoming, about taking time to reflect on the trajectory of our very lives. Do we see a beautiful future on the horizon, or are we sailing in the wrong direction? Only we can decide for ourselves what we truly want, and Lexi struggles through the process of leaving marks on her own life that, upon looking back, she can be happy with.

So, did the book I saw one summer afternoon I strolled through the books aisle of a wholesale warehouse while my mother shopped for vegetables and juice satisfy me? Yes it did, but more than that. It taught me the right way to learn about myself; just like Lexi questioned herself, I learned the importance of questioning my own goals and choices so that I can be who I truly desire to be while remaining honest with myself. That truly is a valuable lesson.

The real gold of this book lies in the protagonist, Lexi, and tagging along with her as she interacts with others and tries to piece herself together. What she learns may surprise you. Sit back and listen as Lexi introduces her brand new life not only to you, but to herself as well; Sophie Kinsella’s Remember Me? is a peep of sunshine that will surely try its best to brighten your day.