Floating Minds: How Young Adult Fiction Represents Forgetting in Old Age and Adolescence

Abstract

YA novels increasingly tell stories about memory loss, from adolescent amnesia to cognitive decline in older age. This article examines the representation of forgetting in Jenny Downham's Unbecoming, Clare Furniss's How Not to Disappear, and Emily Barr's The One Memory of Flora Banks. Drawing on liberatory psychology, queer phenomenology, and theories of creative embodiment, it argues that dominant narratives of dementia and ageing might be challenged by analysing symbolic scenes of floating and falling.