Songs in the Key of Life

Memories in a Notebook: The Awkward Formula for Growing Up is a coming-of-age memoir/novel-in-stories that follows Christopher James Dowling through the fragile, chaotic, and deeply formative years of junior high in late-1980s Florida. Recently uprooted by his parents’ divorce and thrust into Catholic school after his mother’s conversion, Christopher enters seventh grade carrying a mix of shame, confusion, longing, and defiance. He is caught between worlds: between childhood and adolescence, between his mother’s religious rigidity and his father’s complicated absence, between who he has been and who he is becoming.

Christopher’s days are scored by Depeche Mode, The Cure, U2, and Faith No More; every chapter takes its title and emotional resonance from a song that anchors a memory.