katekintailbc | Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (Reply)

Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson
(Audio)

I read this book specifically because it made Amazon.com's list of the top 10 books for Young Adults. It occurred to me, about halfway through, that there's a difference between books for Young Adults and Young Adult fiction. This book was powerful and moving and amazing. However, it probably would have spoken to me even more if I'd been a teen when I read this.

This is the story of a girl who, as we slowly find out throughout the book, was taken advantage of during a party right before her freshman year of high school. Not just taken advantage of--she was raped, pure and simple. We get little bits of and pieces throughout. Everyone at school hates her, because she called the cops during a party a friend put on. We know something significant is wrong. But on the surface, she appears to be a typical kid having trouble adjusting to a new school. I can completely relate to that. I had a tough 8th grade with no friends. And I spent many of my years in high school with friends eating in teacher's classrooms, doing homework instead of the lunch room. I probably would have liked a closet like the one Melinda has.

Melinda's way of coping is to to just not talk about being raped. If she doesn't talk about it, it doesn't hurt as much. But the problem is, she sees the guy at school. And one of her friends starts dating him. She has an incredibly tough choice to make. If she speaks, it might hurt her. But she has to decide whether to say something that could keep someone who hates her from getting hurt the way Melinda was hurt... or whether to not say anything, because no one's going to believe her anyway. In fact, the first person she tells about it thinks she's just being jealous and gets angry at her. The more she avoids talking about it, the more it doesn't even seem real to her. But she still feels it. She goes through the motions, tries to do what's of expected of her in school, tries to cope. But it eats away at her. She takes comfort in certain things, and finds her voice through a visual medium and a physical confrontation. When she wrote a warning to girls about the boy on the wall of a restroom at school, it was a powerful moment. And when she uses treasured items in her closet to help her stand up to the boy, it was amazing.

The themes of trees and growing and of creating are beautifully woven throughout the story. The tree is a symbol, yes, but the way it's presented is so integral and important that it doesn't feel forced. In fact, during Melinda's English class's discussion of the Scarlet Letter, symbols and metaphors are thrown right at us. And still it feels like a part of the story, not forced or separate at all. In fact, one of the happiest moments for me was when Melinda asked her father to get some seeds for her at the store so she could grow a garden. It was very A Secret Garden and very cathartic, but it wasn't all she needed.

All the ways The Perks of Being a Wallflower failed for me are beautifully done here. We see inside her head, so we know why she acts the way she does, but we're the only ones who really understand it. It's actually so justified and understandable. I could relate to having so much misery and having completely justified actions but when someone asks you a direct question like "why did you do that?" you can't say a thing. There are some things that are so painful you can't explain them to someone if that person hasn't been through it. Sometimes I wish people could just look into me and know how I feel without having to explain it in words.

But the thing this book succeeds in explaining is that words are needed, that the hardest but most important thing you can do is speak about it. That doesn't just help someone heal, but it helps other people cope with what happened to them (because, sadly, this sort of thing happens WAY too often), and it helps prevent it from happening to other people. I loved that Melinda decided to speak up not because she needed to say it to heal herself, but because she was trying to save someone else (in fact, someone who hated her). That shows such strength of character.