Laurie Halse Anderson: Speak (Paperback, 1999, Farrar Straus Giroux)
hardback and paperback, 197 pages
English language
Published Jan. 13, 1999 by Farrar Straus Giroux.
A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.
This was a tough read and I never would have heard of it had it not been an assignment for my kid. There's nothing particularly graphic in the book but being a witness to Mel's feelings of despair and solitude were painful.
Couldnt remeber how or why this book landed on my to read list but I did. At first I didn't get it. Was high school really filled with petty kids like these? Then slowly I understood. I scolded myself. Of course, everything isn't as it seems. It's hard to reach out and understand those who don't speak up.
From her first moment at Merryweather High, Melinda Sordino knows she's an outcast. She busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops -- a major infraction in high-school society -- so her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't know glare at her. She retreats into her head, where the lies and hypocrisies of high school stand in stark relief to her own silence, making her all the more mute. But it's not so comfortable in her head, either -- there's something banging around in there that she doesn't …
Couldnt remeber how or why this book landed on my to read list but I did. At first I didn't get it. Was high school really filled with petty kids like these? Then slowly I understood. I scolded myself. Of course, everything isn't as it seems. It's hard to reach out and understand those who don't speak up.
From her first moment at Merryweather High, Melinda Sordino knows she's an outcast. She busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops -- a major infraction in high-school society -- so her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't know glare at her. She retreats into her head, where the lies and hypocrisies of high school stand in stark relief to her own silence, making her all the more mute. But it's not so comfortable in her head, either -- there's something banging around in there that she doesn't want to think about. Try as she might to avoid it, it won't go away, until there is a painful confrontation. Once that happens, she can't be silent -- she must speak the truth.
In this powerful novel, an utterly believable, bitterly ironic heroine speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while learning that, although it's hard to speak up for yourself, keeping your mouth shut is worse.
FIrst: It is my first morning of high school.
Second: Water drips on the paper and the birds bloom in the light, their feathers expanding promise.
