Title: Speak (10th Anniversary Edition)
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Publisher: Speak (Penguin)
Year: 1999/2009
240 pages
This was okay for its genre, and certainly better than some of its ilk. The initiating event, and thus the outcome, was obvious early on, so my reading interest was less a matter of what would happen and more one of how Hulse would get there. I suppose I would have liked the protagonist to have more insight about how she also engages in stereotyping and writing people off; while she resolved the plot by addressing the problem, but this could have been an opportunity for more maturational self-reflection as well.
I was entertained by the protagonist's railing against symbolism, and the author's comments in this edition about not liking what she had to read in English class, when the symbolism here is troweled on like goth makeup. Perhaps this is one of the insights I'd have liked Melinda to experience. Ah, well. At least the attractive boy is a nerd, and at least there are no teen vampires.
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