Don't You Forget About Me – Jancee Dunn

Rolling Stone Writer’s Wistful Novel of High School Days

Aug 19, 2008

Manhattan thirty something Lillian Curtis takes a sabbatical from her television producer job to go home to New Jersey and attend her reunion.

At almost thirty eight years old, Lillian Curtis proves that you can go back home again – that is, if you’ve just gotten a divorce and need to get out of the apartment in the city and regroup for a while.

Lily was content with her life – she had settled in happily to the pajama-like comfort that married life can bring, she enjoyed her regular and routine job as a television producer for the hit show Tell Me Everything!, a talk show targeted toward senior citizens starring host Vi (“short for Vibrant!”) Barbour. So when her husband suddenly approaches her and requests a divorce, she’s shocked.

You Can Go Home Again

At Vi’s request, Lily takes a sabbatical from her job and returns home to her parents’ house in the suburban town of Morristown, New Jersey, to get her bearings. There, in her old bedroom, she spends her time there reliving her high school days, listening to old mix tapes and driving past her high school love Christian Somers’s house. She easily falls back into her high school persona, coming home too late, thinking too little and wondering how her life might have turned out differently.

When she receives an invitation to her high school class reunion, she sees it as an opportunity to reconnect with her friends and – most importantly – Christian. Has he changed since she last saw him?

Some Things Never Change

Lily attends the reunion with some of her closest friends, who’ve all moved on since their days as the Class of ’88. She’s still the same Lily, however, and when Christian shows up, she’s thrilled that he wants to talk to her and reconnect.

They begin dating, and in the process Lily finds out that some things never change. Christian is still the boy she fell in love with, but is he the man for her? And has she really changed since high school?

About Jancee Dunn

Jancee Dunn grew up in Chatham, New Jersey. As a former staff writer at Rolling Stone, she wrote twenty cover stories for the magazine. Her writing has also appeared in GQ, Vogue, The New York Times, and O: The Oprah Magazine. 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 in Brooklyn, New York.

The copyright of the article Don't You Forget About Me – Jancee Dunn in American Fiction is owned by Teresa Shaw. Permission to republish Don't You Forget About Me – Jancee Dunn in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.