Speak

LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON/PRINTZ

Melinda's high school experience is horrific, to say the least. After she calls the police during a party over the summer, she becomes a social pariah. But nobody knows the truth, which is that she was raped at the party by an upperclassman. The story follows her through her ninth grade year's failures, and at times it seems as though nothing will ever get better. Anderson is a whiz when it comes to generating memorable and unique nomenclature (Mr. Neck, school cliques, etc), and her short, choppy writing style punctuates Melinda's pain with every sentence. What surprised me, however, is that for a book with such heavy subject matter and with so frustrating and broken a protagonist, the book is funny. Recommended for older female teens.

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.