Shallee McArthur is joining us today with her novel The Unhappening of Genesis Lee. Here’s the publisher’s description.
What would it feel like to never forget? Or to have a memory stolen?
Seventeen-year-old Genesis Lee has never forgotten anything. As one of the Mementi–a small group of genetically enhanced humans–Gena remembers everything with the help of her Link bracelets, which preserve memories perfectly. But Links can be stolen, and six people have already lost their lives to a memory thief, including Gena’s best friend.
Anyone could be next. That’s why Gena is less than pleased to meet a strange but charming boy named Kalan who claims not only that they have met before, but that Gena knows who the thief is.
The problem is, Gena doesn’t remember Kalan, she doesn’t remember seeing the thief, and she doesn’t know why she’s forgetting things–or how much else she might forget. As growing tensions between Mementi and ordinary humans drive the city of Havendale into chaos, Gena and Kalan team up to search for the thief. And as Gena loses more memories, they realize they have to solve the mystery fast…because Gena’s life is unhappening around her.
What’s Shallee’s favorite bit?
SHALLEE McARTHUR
I am afraid of forgetting.
The first time I realized it, I sat on a semi-secluded patch of grass on my college campus, crying to my mom over the phone. Six weeks prior, I had returned from an incredible experience—four months living and teaching in Ghana, West Africa. But now I was home, back to everything like it had never happened. I whispered to my mom through the phone,
“What if I forget?”
I knew I wouldn’t forget the experience as a whole. It was one of those things we say is “unforgettable,” but that’s only true to an extent. Already, I was learning that details fade, and I clung to them desperately, dreaming and daydreaming of them. I tried to hold on to the exact color of a Harmattan sky clouded by dust blowing down from the Sahara, and the precise places where the boards under my mattress pressed into my back at night, and the sound of tiny Benjie’s voice saying, “B is for Benjie!”
Forgetting these things felt like it would make the entire four months unhappen.
It was six years before I wrote The Unhappening of Genesis Lee—the story of a girl who never forgot any tiny detail, until her externally-stored memories started getting stolen. Through this book, I was able to confront my own fear of forgetting.
I got to explore something else, too, and this is my favorite bit. When you forget something, it doesn’t mean that thing is truly gone. A memory is more than a picture playing in your mind of a past event. It’s also the internal change the event created inside you. You became you through these moments, even if you don’t remember every detail of them.
So how does it feel to still be that you…but to have absolutely no memory of the moments and choices and people who made you who you are?
That’s what I got to play with. That’s the fear I got to confront. And that is my favorite bit about the whole book.
LINKS:
BIO:
Shallee McArthur originally wanted to be a scientist, until she discovered she liked her science best in fictional form. When she’s not writing young adult science fiction and fantasy, she’s attempting to raise her son and daughter as proper geeks. A little part of her heart is devoted to Africa after volunteering twice in Ghana. She has a degree in English from Brigham Young University and lives in Utah with her husband and two children.
And because people always ask, her name is pronounced “shuh-LEE.” But she answers to anything that sounds remotely close.
