The Memo: A Novel

by Rachel Dodes, Lauren Mechling

Overview

"The perfect summer read: a novel both quick and funny." —Airmail

“A total joyride of a novel. The Memo is a funny, fascinating exploration of love, friendship, ambition and what it truly means to live a good life. I loved it.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Commencement, Maine, and Friends and Strangers

If you could rewrite your life story, would you dare? That’s the question at the heart of this funny, sharp and propulsive debut novel about love, life, and a woman finding herself and what it means to be happy and successful.

Do you ever feel like your life doesn’t measure up to everyone else’s—and wonder if you just didn’t get the memo helping you make the right choices?

Jenny Green dreads her upcoming college reunion. Once top of her class, the thirty-five-year-old finds herself stuck in a life that isn’t the one she expected. Her promising career has flamed out (literally) and her deadbeat boyfriend is cheating on her (again). All her friends seem to have it all figured it out, enjoying glittering lives and careers that she can only envy from the sidelines. Did she just not get the memo they all did?

As it turns out, she didn’t!

When she arrives at her alma mater for the festivities, she receives a text from an unlisted number.

“Jenny Green: please collect your memo.”

Somewhere on campus, a discreet female-led organization provides comprehensive memos to select students, a set of instructions that are a blueprint for success.

The first time around, Jenny didn’t receive hers. Now, she’s being given the second chance she wants—an opportunity to relive her life and make all the right decisions this time around. But at what price?

Smart, addictive, bittersweet, and ultimately triumphant, The Memo will enchant readers of In Five Years and Cassandra in Reverse as well as fans of Emma Straub and Maria Semple.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063319370
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/18/2024
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	13,912
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Rachel Dodes is a freelance culture writer. She’s a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, and her work has also appeared in Town & Country, Elle, Esquire, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Buzzfeed among other publications. She was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal where she covered fashion and film. She lives in New York with her husband, son, and dog.

Lauren Mechling is a senior editor at the Guardian US and has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, the New Yorker online, and Vogue, where she wrote a regular book column. She's worked as a crime reporter and metro columnist for the New York Sun and as features editor at the Wall Street Journal. A dual Canadian and American citizen, she got her start in newspaper reporting at a Toronto daily, where she worked for several years in her twenties. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two children.

Editorial Reviews

07/08/2024

Debut author Dodes and Mechling (How Could She) spin a fanciful and moving Sliding Doors–esque tale. Jenny Green, 35, is overworked and underappreciated by her narcissistic boss, Alice, and suspects that her boyfriend, Hal, is cheating on her. Meanwhile, her best friends Geeta and Leigh seem to have their lives together, and Jenny starts to wonder if the successful women around her all got the same memo that she missed. Color her surprised when a woman from her past, college career counselor Desiree LeBlanc, reappears in her life to deliver just that. The memo turns out to be a set of instructions for reliving life’s turning points, and making different decisions. Using it, Jenny rewrites her life. Now she’s dating Alex, the wealthy, art-collecting lawyer with whom she previously missed her chance at connection, and running her own vegan meal-delivery service. But alternative choices have unexpected consequences and in changing her history, Jenny may inadvertently impact the life of someone she cares for deeply. The authors make it easy to suspend disbelief by keeping the focus squarely on Jenny’s emotional journey, and they expertly capture her fear and ambivalence in the face of risky life decisions. This well-told tale will leave readers wanting more. (June)

Publishers Weekly

A modernized Sliding Doors set amid a delightfully specific milieu, this is a paranormal parable with a very relatable heart.”  — Vogue

"So sharp, so funny. You might feel better or worse about your own life, but you'll definitely be laughing." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A fresh and intriguing—and surprisingly deep—take on the second-chance trope." — Booklist (starred review)

"Like Sliding Doors crossed with A Christmas Carol, this winsome and bittersweet novel will get you thinking about the roads not taken in your own life." — Esquire

"A perfect summer read. A novel both quick and funny." — Airmail

“Highly satirical, remarkably clever.”  — Bustle

"A delightfully silly book with a pure heart at its center." — Glamour

"Smart, funny, and impossible to put down." — Town & Country

“[A] clever time warp.” — Vanity Fair

“Dodes and Mechling’s first book together (which is Dodes’s fiction debut and Mechling’s second adult novel, after How Could She) is a tribute to a world of possibility. . . . . Millennial women in particular might be drawn to this inventive novel about launching one’s life. Read-alikes include The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas, Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale, and The Good Part by Sophie Cousens.” — Library Journal

“This innovative, darkly humorous novel is a unique blend of alternative reality/quasi-sci-fi and romantic comedy that coincidentally has debuted in time for their own 25^th college reunions. . . . Rachel Dodes and Lauren Mechling have crafted a must-read novel exploring what truly matters in life: family, friendships, home and heart providing their readers a hilarious and joy-filled experience. The Memo is keenly intelligent and insightful as well as humorous. Let us set aside the “what-ifs” by accepting, embracing and celebrating what we have and our own personal awakenings.” — BookTrib

“This is a great debut novel, with a unique plot that keeps you reading along and wondering how your life might be different if you could go back and change things. A perfect beach read.” — Red Carpet Crash

"The Memo is a fanciful story, with a happy ending and the moral lesson that the grass is not always greener on the other side. . . . The story shows the impact of seemingly insignificant decisions and the importance of believing in yourself." — The Jewish Voice and Opinion

"Don't miss The Memo. A unique and riveting novel about a chance to redo your ‘what ifs.' You will love this narrator and be pulling for her." — Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me

"Insanely entertaining, hilarious, and ingenious! The Memo had me cry-laughing so hard that my husband had to move to another room. My only complaint about The Memo is I wish I'd gotten my hands on it sooner. To think of what could have been!" — Jenny Mollen, actress and New York Times bestselling author of City of Likes and Live Fast Die Hot

“Smart, sharp, darkly funny, and every woman’s fantasy: the chance to course-correct a life full of flawed decisions with the help of a memo. What could possibly go wrong?! I loved The Memo and the brilliant imaginations of Lauren Mechling and Rachel Dodes that created it.” — Laura Zigman, bestselling author of Animal Husbandry and Small World

“A total joyride of a novel. The Memo is a funny, fascinating exploration of love, friendship, ambition and what it truly means to live a good life. I loved it.” — J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Commencement, Maine, and Friends and Strangers

"A hilarious romp through the space-time continuum."  — Kelly Cutrone

“This book is hilarious! It had me cackling and reading sentences out loud to my pet rabbit.”  — Nell Freudenberger, New York Times bestselling author of The Newlyweds and The Limits

From the Publisher

06/01/2024

Dodes and Mechling's first book together (which is Dodes's fiction debut and Mechling's second adult novel, after How Could She) is a tribute to a world of possibility. When a career counselor suggests to college senior Jenny Green that she quit school a few weeks before graduation, she does not take that advice, but while her friends move on to uber-successful careers, Jenny feels like she is stagnating. She wonders if everyone else got the memo and learned to succeed and why she did not. She's not thrilled with her new assistant job, she's pretty sure her boyfriend is cheating on her, and she has to deal with her upcoming 15-year college reunion. Then she receives an anonymous text message urging her to collect a memoir and follow its instructions; she does, and her whole world starts shifting on its axis. With a whiff of time travel, Jenny bounces between her old life and this possible new life, but eventually, she has to make a not-inconsiderable decision and face reality head-on. VERDICT Millennial women in particular might be drawn to this inventive novel about launching one's life. Read-alikes include The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas, Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale, and The Good Part by Sophie Cousens.—Stacy Alesi

Library Journal

★ 2024-04-13
What if "the memo" wasn't a metaphor, and you really didn't get it?

At 35, Jenny Green is happy-ish. She lives in Pittsburgh—not exactly the center of the universe—with Hal, an unambitious but super-hot guy she met nine years ago on a beach in Costa Rica. She works for a philanthropy that supports girls and women, which sounds good on paper, but it's really a vanity project for a wealthy nightmare of a woman who only wants Jenny to get her coverage in the national media. Oh, and it turns out Hal is having an affair. Jenny has no desire to go to her 15-year college reunion, but she skipped the last one and her (more successful) friends are persistent. What she doesn't expect, once on campus, is to run into Desiree LeBlanc, the pushy career counselor whose advice she spurned just before graduation—and who's now offering her another chance. It turns out Desiree had been planning to give her the Memo—the "actual, tangible, Upper-Case-Letter thing"—and the fact that Jenny has spent her life floundering can be attributed to her having walked away. But Jenny isn't just going to be following the Memo's advice going forward; Desiree and her Consortium have discovered a way to send her back to crucial moments in the past with explicit instructions on what she should be doing to turn herself into a self-actualized superwoman. What could go wrong? Dodes and Mechling have come up with a great concept—the elevator pitch writes itself!—and filled it with insight, wit, and perfectly chosen details of life among a segment of the population that might once have looked at Sheryl Sandberg'sLean Inas a guide. They explore issues of love, work, friendship, ambition, and fulfillment that feel timeless yet particularly pertinent in the social media era, when it's so hard to see past the surface of other people's high-powered facades.

So sharp, so funny. You might feel better or worse about your own life, but you'll definitely be laughing.

Kirkus Reviews