Product Description

When two worlds collide, life begins to make a different sort of sense! On the fifth anniversary of his sister's death, nineteen-year-old Jonny Dart is still troubled by guilt and an imperfect memory of the accident that took her life. He goes searching for the only other witness to the fatal event, his sister's best friend. But instead of finding the answers he's looking for, he finds Sophie -- an old woman with Alzheirmer's. Sophie lives with several cats in genteel but dreadful squalor, and has no memory of recent events. As a temporary outcast and labelled 'loser', Jonny takes refuge with her. In Sophie's house, past and present merge for both of them. Their accidental meeting changes their lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #699722 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
'Perceptive, amusing, never condescending.' Daily Telegraph

About the Author
Margaret Mahy was born in New Zealand and has loved telling stories all her life. She has published well over a hundred titles and won several major prizes and awards, including The Order of New Zealand, for her internationally-acclaimed contribution to children's literature. She has twice won the prestigious Carnegie Medal, (The Haunting, 1982, and The Changeover, 1984). Margaret lives in the South Island of New Zealand, in a house which she partially built herself, overlooking Governor's Bay.

Excerpted from Memory by Margaret Mahy. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Groping his way through darkness, certain he was no longer
on the true path, Jonny suddenly saw a square of light
appear ahead of him – the window of a house. His long
scramble through unrelieved blackness was almost over.
Looking in from the road, uneasy in this odd rural area
still so close to the city it did not seem like proper country,
he had thought everything would be straight forward.The
drive, well used and wide, had curved sleekly in under the
trees. The solitary street lamp had illuminated the notice
at the gate.Rivendell Community, it had read. Kia Ora,
Welcome.

Underneath this were the names of the five families
making up the community and there, quite clearly, it said
Carl and Ruth Benedicta and Family. There had been
nothing to suggest that, only a little way from the road,
great trees would press in around the drive and that the
cloudy night would become completely impenetrable.
"I’m not that drunk," Jonny had argued aloud, but
nothing had argued back at him out of the darkness.

Now,however, there was a light ahead and, where there
was a light, there would be a door t knock on. Someone
would answer. Standing back in the shadows a little he
would ask very politely if he could speak to Bonny for a
moment. He went through the motion of consulting a
watch which he knew he would be unable to see. Time
was there, somewhere on the end of his arm, but lost in
the dark.

Much earlier in this wild, shapeless night, in another
time and another place, Jonny had sat down to a delicious
meal with his parents and his little sisters, had even helped
with the dishes in a cooperative, home-loving fashion.
"Five years ago today …"his father had said. It was hard
for Jonny not to feel something reproachful in the simple
words, as if he, Jonny, had no right still to be around –
making jokes and plans – with Janine gone. The twins had
continued to push and squeak, but all they knew of Janine
was her photograph smiling from the top of the television
set.
Jonny had hugged his mother, nodded a little
doubtfully at his father and had set out to join friends
who played in a band at a city pub.
Now he was stumbling in the dark, whirling with the
mixture of red wine and brandy with which he had
commanded a feverish lightheartedness, hoping to hold
off attacks of memory. In between being wildly cheerful
then ,and lost in the dark now ,lay violence and fury – a
fight with sudden enemies, an argument with the police,
and then another argument with his father outside the
police station. A full evening!