Title: Speak
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Series: N/A
Publisher: Speak
Publish Date: 4/23/2001
Genre: YA Contemporary
Pages: 208
Source: Bought
Buy the Book: Speak
Grade: A
Description: Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn’t even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that’s not safe. Because there’s something she’s trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth. This extraordinary first novel has captured the imaginations of teenagers and adults across the country. (Via Goodreads)
Shaunta’s Review: I had Speak on my book shelf for months before I read it. I found it at a thrift store. The cover looked to me like a poetry chap book or some kind of non-fiction self-help book, maybe. (My copy is the Platinum Edition, pictured to the left.) For some reason, I read the back copy and bought it anyway.
I am so glad I did. So glad.
I’m 40 years old, and high school was in the 1980s for me. A long time ago. But I remember feeling the way Melinda does in Speak. My issues were different than hers, but I can remember sitting in my closet feeling so utterly, completely alone, with horrible, terrible, awful thoughts screaming around my head. That’s the feeling that Anderson has captured completely in Speak.
This is not a light read. It’s intense and told from deep inside the head of the troubled main character. Melinda doesn’t end the story completely fixed, which I loved. She has some healing to do. A lot of it. But there is hope that she’s on her way to getting it.
When I think about the kind of work I want to do as a writer, Speak is the kind of book that comes to mind. Not because I write contemporary issue books. I don’t. But because I want my books to reach into the reader and change something. Even if it’s just a little something. That’s what Speak did for me, even though its been decades since I felt like Melinda does. I wish that I could have read this book when I was about fifteen. It would have made a difference.
After I finished reading the book, I watched the movie. On Youtube. Yes, ten minutes at a time. Kristen Stewart stared, and while I doubt there is another young actress alive who does the depressed teenager thing better, she wasn’t what I pictured for Melinda Sordino. I’ll show you the trailer, but you really must read the book. The movie is a pale substitute.
WHAT I LOVED: Everything. The characters. The voice. The pacing. The way Melinda seemed to unfurl through the story, like a seed. The way it doesn’t end with her as some magnificent flower, but just a little seedling barely starting to push up through the ground. I loved how true this book felt.
WHAT I DIDN’T LOVE: The cover of the Platinum Edition is a big fail for me.
GRADE: A. This is a book I’ll be recommending. A lot.
