Restart by Gordon Korman - student book review by Arav

Where do I even begin with this book? The many interesting characters? The interesting premise? The somewhat satisfying conclusion? I honestly do not know. If I had to be brief, Restart by Gordon Korman is a book that I could wholeheartedly recommend to a lot of people as, barring some slight problems, manages to deliver an interesting ride unlike any other.

The plot of Restart revolves around the character of Chase Ambrose who, due to a fall from the roof of his house, gets amnesia and has to figure out just who he was, and who he wants to be in life. Without going into too much detail, as I fear giving anything away could lessen the book’s impact, what sets Restart apart from other books are a few important details. The first of these “details” is one of the main structural draws of the book - its changing characters. While there are a few instances where the same character has multiple chapters in a row, Korman manages to shift perspective on the plot many, many times throughout the events of the plot. These shifts manage to make the book play out really well for a few reasons. For one, the shifts do not accompany a retelling of previous events from the other character’s point of view. While many other books try to retell the information to demonstrate some of the differences in each character’s personality and in their reliability, Korman simply takes that out to give the plot more focus than before. This break from convention makes the reader read critically and examine both the motivations and the reliability of each character, like how Chase learns to do through the course of the book.

Secondly, they help complicate some of the relationships between Chase and his past. For example, early in the book readers are sure to hate Bear and Aaron, Chase’s old jock friends. However, Korman then surprises us by shifting events to their perspective, forcing us to re-evaluate how we feel about them in the same manner that Chase does. While such chapters do not serve to make their actions seem logical or even reasonable, they do serve to ensure that readers do not make categorizations like “antagonist” without looking at events from their point of view. The shifts, in effect, serve to prompt readers to look at Chase’s story with both renewed suspicion and renewed sympathy, for no set of events are ever as simple as we make them to be. Besides the changing characters, Korman also excelled with the overall pacing of the story. While some amnesia storylines tend to become oversaturated with memories as the amnesiac struggles to figure out what is real and what is false, Korman pushes most of that aside to demonstrate how being a new person does not require much more than a critical look at one’s life.

Due to the many character shifts, Korman manages to selectively reveal key plot elements in a manner that honestly blew me away. While most readers will pick up on most of the subtleties, like some of the burgeoning relationships between protagonists, the overall significance of these to the plot of the book is only revealed much, much later, forcing the reader to understand some of the complexities in human communication and contemplate how hard it is to understand someone else. Additionally, due to certain surprise events, Korman manages to surprise and delight readers by completely exploring the possibilities that revolve around Chase’s situation. From making new friends to losing old ones to even learning new skills, Korman demonstrates some of the promise that life can give us, and some of the problems with trying to completely escape our past. Overall, this book is truly a delight to read, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone struggling to understand who they are in life and where life is taking them.

While the book does not end up banishing any of these problems, it helps readers understand some of the complexities of the manner and shows them that such problems do not need to impede someone from living his or her life. In terms of school usage, it would be a great way to introduce the concept of an “unreliable narrator” and a good way to talk about problems people might have socializing or trying to make friends, especially when people are trying to understand their place in society and their role in a community. In terms of extended study, it also might make for a fun way to compare the realism in literature to that of science for while Korman does make a concerted effort to stay truthful to cognitive science, his focus is on crafting a good story, one which might have some flaws scientifically. Besides these uses, however, it simply is a fun read, one which readers will enjoy for its accuracy to how they feel when entering a new school or job, whether that new locale be something as small as a middle school or as big as a college. While the last chapter could easily have been cut out, as Brendan’s summary of the story simply felt tacked on to the rest of the book, Korman manages to hit a home run on showing all of us that we can be better people, and inspires us to try to improve our lives, one step at a time.

Author Website: http://gordonkorman.com/