Restart
Gordon Korman (2017)
“What if you woke up and couldn't remember being a terrible person — would you still be one?”
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Restart
Gordon Korman (2017) · 244pages · Contemporary
Summary
Chase Ambrose, a thirteen-year-old bully, falls off the roof of his house and loses all memory of who he was. When he returns to school, he discovers he was feared and hated by most students but idolized by his cruel friends. Without his memories to guide him, Chase must decide who he wants to be — and whether the person he was before deserves forgiveness or erasure.
Why It Matters
Restart became one of the most widely assigned middle-grade novels in American schools within years of publication because it accomplished something rare: it made students empathize with a bully while never minimizing the damage bullying causes. The multiple-narrator structure gives equal weight ...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: Conversational and age-appropriate — first-person narration by a thirteen-year-old, with vocabulary that reflects middle school speech patterns without being condescending
Narrator: Multiple rotating first-person narrators, with Chase as primary. The rotation creates dramatic irony — the reader hol...
Figurative Language: Low to moderate
Historical Context
2010s suburban America — cyberbullying awareness, social media documentation, restorative justice movement in schools: The novel exists in a cultural moment when bullying is taken seriously as a systemic problem rather than a character-building experience. The YouTube video of Chase's bullying reflects the reality ...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- If Chase never fell off the roof and never lost his memory, do you think he would have ever stopped being a bully? What does the novel suggest about whether people can change without a dramatic event?
- Shoshanna refuses to forgive Chase even after he protects Brendan at the halftime show. Is she right to hold onto her anger? Does forgiveness require the victim's participation, or can it happen without it?
- Why does Gordon Korman use multiple narrators instead of telling the story only from Chase's perspective? What would the novel lose if we only heard Chase's voice?
- Chase's amnesia is real, but is his new personality real? Is the 'new Chase' his true self freed from bad influences, or is he just a blank slate that hasn't been corrupted yet?
- The YouTube video of Chase bullying Joel is digital evidence that can't be denied. How does the permanence of digital recordings change the dynamics of bullying compared to previous generations?
Notable Quotes
“The worst part of having no memory is that you don't even know what you're missing.”
“Mom looked at me like she was trying to figure out if I was still in there.”
“People were afraid of me. Not a few people. Everybody.”
Why Read This
Because this book asks the hardest question you'll face in middle school and beyond: can people change? Not in a fairy tale way where the bad guy becomes good overnight, but in a real way where someone who hurt people has to figure out how to be d...