Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is a book for teens about a girl who has been raped and the circumstances surrounding her trauma and the year following as she struggles with reclaiming a place in her world. Largely a book of mental processes and flashbacks, the book tells its story well - bringing the reader into the main character's mind and lets teens experience this event and the start of the healing process from a safe place (outside of the situation).
Speak is the
Go Ask Alice of this generation (though never fear, there is no shortage of readers for
G.A.A.). These books speak to what I like to think of as the "They've got it soooo much worse than I do" appeal factor. This also explains the incredible appeal of
A Child Called It to this same audience. In my opinion,
Speak is a much higher quality book, though it does not purport to be a true story because it's not so sensationalized and the moral of the story doesn't hit the reader over the head like a sledgehammer. Still, I think probably for a lot of girls (and perhaps a few guys who read this as a required book for school) when they find themselves drifting into a similar situation, they might be more likely to find a friend to take them home before anything happened - or not stick close to their friends so that none of them could be injured or taken advantage of in an inebriated state.
I'd highly recommend this to fans of V.C. Andrews and for people who like to read about other people coming through difficult circumstances (fans of
A Child Called It,
Go Ask Alice,
Mr & Mrs Bo Jones, etc..). For everyone else, it's worthwhile as a teenager, but less impressive for an adult audience. For adults who like this kind of book, I'd recommend
Sybil or
Ghost Girl.
Art Attack: A Brief Cultural History of the Avant-Garde by Marc Aronson
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