Laurie Halse Anderson, Emily Carroll: Speak (2019, Hachette Children's Group)
384 pages
English language
Published March 12, 2019 by Hachette Children's Group.
"Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, …
"Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication.
In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself.
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.
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.
