Summary

After earning rave reviews with her rock-and-roll memoir But Enough About Me, Jancee Dunn takes on fiction in this comically poignant debut, a perfect read for anyone who has ever looked back nostalgically and wondered what might have been. At thirty-eight, Lillian Curtis is content with her life. She enjoys her routine as a producer for a talk show in New York City starring showbiz veteran Vi ("short for vibrant") Barbour, a spirited senior. Lillian's relationship with her husband is pleasant if no longer exciting. Most nights she is more than happy to come home to her apartment and crawl into her pajamas. Then she's hit with a piece of shocking news: Her husband wants a divorce. Blindsided, Lillian takes a leave of absence and moves back to her parents' home in suburban New Jersey. Nestled in her childhood bedroom, where Duran Duran and Squeeze posters still cover the walls, she finds high school memories a healing salve to her troubles. She hurtles backward into her teen years, driving too fast, digging up mix tapes, and tentatively reconciling with Dawn, a childhood friend she once betrayed. Punctuating her stroll down memory lane is an invitation to the Bethel Memorial High School class of 1988 twenty-year reunion. It just might be Lillian's chance to reconnect with her long-lost boyfriend, Christian Somers, who is expected to attend. Will it be just like heaven? Lillian discovers, as we all must, the pitfalls of glorifying the glory days, the mortification of failing as a thirtysomething adult, and the impossibility of fully recapturing the past. Don't You Forget About Me is for anyone who looks back and wonders: What if? From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

Jancee Dunn grew up in Chatham, New Jersey. From 1989 to 2003, she was a staff writer at Rolling Stone, for which she wrote twenty cover stories. Her work has also appeared in GQ, for which she wrote a monthly sex advice column; Vogue; The New York Times; and O: The Oprah Magazine, for which she writes a monthly ethics column. She has also been a VJ for MTV2 and an entertainment correspondent for Good Morning America. Dunn is the author of But Enough About Me, a memoir about her life as a chronically nervous celebrity interviewer. She lives with her husband, the writer Tom Vanderbilt, in Brooklyn, New York.

www.janceedunn.com

From the Hardcover edition.

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Excerpts

Chapter One

“Lillian!” Vi caroled from her dressing room. “Can you come in here? We need your opinion.”

“Coming,” I called. I already knew what I was going to see. The same scene replayed itself every week or so.

Vi stood in the middle of the room, hands on hips. She was wearing one of her usual ensembles: a mint-green pantsuit in what she called a “fine-grain” polyester, a red and green scarf knotted at her throat, colossal red glasses, and shiny white enamel earrings the size of half-dollars. Vi’s wardrobe assistant, Keysha, threw me a pleading glance.

“Keysha says this suit makes me look old,” Vi said with mock anger.

Keysha sighed. “Mint green is not a good look on anyone. Not on hospital workers, and not on you.” She adjusted Vi’s lapels. “Could you just break it up with a different pair of pants?”

“It’s pistachio, not mint green, first of all.” Vi turned and regarded me. “Lillian, does this make me look old?” Whenever Vi showed me an outfit, she thrust her foot forward in a ninety-degree angle, like a fifties fashion model.

It was probably not the time to remind her that she was seventy-four. I took in the entire getup and found myself smiling. I loved Vi’s cheery fruit-salad outfits, even when they were slightly demented, but then I always preferred the “before” entry in makeover shows. What was so wrong with piling on accessories and wearing colors not found in nature?

“You look terrific,” I said.Terrificwas one of Vi’s favorite words. I had adopted it over the years, along withmarvelous, nifty,andspectacular.If any particular day was not spectacular, Vi would will it into being so.

Keysha sighed in defeat. “Tell makeup to put a little more rouge on you, at least, so your skin doesn’t look green,” she told Vi.Rougewas another word that we all had picked up.

I followed Vi into the makeup room to go over the day’s schedule. Usually she had two guests onTell Me Everything! With Vi Barbour,but this morning she had landed one of the fifties’ biggest names, Gene Murphy, so he had the full hour. Of course, in his heyday, Gene would never have deigned to appear on a minor network chat show with an autumn-years demographic, but these days he was happy to guest on a program where he’d never have to explain who he was to a blank-faced twenty-two-year-old production assistant. OnTell Me Everything!,Vi would announce grandly that a man like Gene Murphy needed no introduction.

“Gene will be arriving in fifteen minutes,” I said. “His only request is that he wants to talk about a cable documentary he’s featured in about the studio system in the forties. Oh, and he says he has a ‘cute story’ about a contest the studio ran that involved a date with him, so be sure and ask about that.”

Vi nodded. “Check, and check,” she said. Vi retained everything. Never once did she require notes or a cue card. She grabbed my arm. “And did you find those books that Monte wanted?”

“I sent them yesterday.” I had ceased being a mere producer years ago. I was social secretary, shrink, stylist. To my husband Adam’s eternal irritation, the phone started ringing at dawn, when Vi awoke to do her “calisthenics,” basically a series of swishing movements. Her constant consulting with me maintained a reassuringly bustling level of activity in her life.

A production assistant rushed in. “He’s here,” she said, panting.

I looked at my watch. Gene was ten minutes early. I had friends who worked at other talk shows in New York–hair splitters would say “more popular prime-time talk shows with millions

Excerpted from Don't You Forget about Me: A Novel by Jancee Dunn
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