Hardback and paperback, 197 pages
English language
Published Sept. 5, 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.
I hope everyone has a Mr. Freeman.
Full review on Reader's Dialogue: http://readersdialogue.blogspot.com
Wow. I'd read a lot about this book and wasn't sure I wanted to read it, since I knew it deals with rape. But this really is a teen book, so the word rape shows up only twice, on the same page, and the way the whole subject is dealt with is perfect for a teen.
I felt every part of the emotion of the story - the dull, plodding-along, non-feeling sliding into crazy-eye terror and a deep, dark ache that doesn't seem to have relief. Melinda tries to shut down everything, but when she can't block it out, the feeling jumps off the page and overwhelms me. It never lets up, but has some interesting interludes when Melinda can't control her laughter - and that brought tears to my eyes more than the rest of it.
The motif of the tree project in …
Full review on Reader's Dialogue: http://readersdialogue.blogspot.com
Wow. I'd read a lot about this book and wasn't sure I wanted to read it, since I knew it deals with rape. But this really is a teen book, so the word rape shows up only twice, on the same page, and the way the whole subject is dealt with is perfect for a teen.
I felt every part of the emotion of the story - the dull, plodding-along, non-feeling sliding into crazy-eye terror and a deep, dark ache that doesn't seem to have relief. Melinda tries to shut down everything, but when she can't block it out, the feeling jumps off the page and overwhelms me. It never lets up, but has some interesting interludes when Melinda can't control her laughter - and that brought tears to my eyes more than the rest of it.
The motif of the tree project in her art class is perfect in showing her changing and static emotions and states of mind throughout the book. Though her teacher says art will show emotion, and though he tries to interpret her art, nothing is ever so clear as he might think. Melinda's struggles with how to create good art parallel her struggles to appear normal while not stifling a huge part of herself.
Certain lines in the book capture the matter-of-fact despair that Melinda feels. One line that especially jumped out at me - "Maybe I'll be an artist if I grow up." She constantly says things like this, that show how the incident affected her so deeply that even when she thinks she's being normal, she can't really deal with it. She doesn't think "when" I grow up, but "if" - so much has her thought process changed that she doesn't even notice how off that sounds.
While this can't really be termed pleasure-reading, I think it's a very important book, not only for teens thinking about rape, but for teens struggling with any kind of impossible secret, anything that affects them in this sort of way. The book does not end with a happily-ever-after, nicely tied-up ending - but it does leave a message of hope, of strength and resilience and a light in the dark.
An amazing and touching journey in the life of a high school freshman dealing with a traumatic event.
I'm not sure why I read this, or to be precise, why other adults are reading this. It seems like a good thing for kids to read, but for anyone over twenty it'll feel like a Very Special Episode: awkward, predictable. It started off promising but I felt disappointed by the shallowness of the characters. They just weren't believable, they were puppets for benefit of the story. That's fine for a fable, but in hindsight I was hoping for something more.
