I just finished reading Laurie Halse Anderson's novel Speak. Verdict: Definitely worth the time....and the honor Printz award it won back in 2000. Melinda Sordino enters freshman year at Merryweather High an outcast, blacklisted by old friends for calling the cops to break up a party. Rather than speak about what happened, Melinda opts for silence, to the dissatisfaction of teachers and her parents. As Mel struggles to survive in an environment where she is labeled with a bad reputation, the reader is left wondering if the truth will ever come out.
Speak authentically engages this theme of silence. Mel is incapable of talking about what happened. Her words have been taken from her and so she retreats into herself, drawing farther away from anyone who threatens that silence. She lives in constant fear and pain. And nobody has any idea. She is entirely alone. Her parents aren't involved enough to bother trying to reach out to her and her friends all hate her. All she has is an art class she stumbles into and a kindly art teacher who can see her brokenness and her need to express it through art. In art, she finds a way to channel her emotion, to begin to sort through the chaos within. It keeps her sane, if only barely. As the novel progresses, one is forced to wonder, will the girl break the silence or will the silence swallow the girl?
By the end of the novel, Melinda is a good friend that one can't help but root for. The internal struggle with herself and the outward struggles with teachers, friends, and family are excellently and realistically portrayed making it impossible not to empathize. In the end, it is an intriguing, desperate read that sucks you in and keeps you reading when you should be doing other things.
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