First thoughts on Speak

So, it's a YA novel which means you have to approach it with a different mentality. Not a lot of dense prose or weighty philosophy to ponder. But at best, it should really make the reader feel like they felt at that age, no matter how ephemerally.

The main reason I read this book, other than the fact that so many people I know on Goodreads have read it and I'm always curious about current novels that make their way onto school reading lists, is that I read an editorial written by some upstanding goose-stepping citizen for a Missouri newspaper explaining that it should be banned because the book is pornography.

It's just tedious to rant about this fool who finds rape so titillating so instead, here are a few lines I liked. They are, as you can see, distinctly unporny:

(I just have to childishly add the dude's name was Wesley Scroggins. Is that a To Catch a Predator-ready name or what? Also, I hope his testicles fall off after being crushed by the paw of the demi-urge of free thought. Ok, I am childish. But seriously, I also hope it hurts a lot.)

I sneak into my closet after school because I can't face the idea of riding home on a busful of sweaty, smiling teeth sucking up my oxygen.

[Melinda reflects on a meeting in the Principal's office with her tragically clueless parents to discuss her falling grades]
Do they chose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing. I wonder how long it takes to ride a bus to Arizona.


When we get off the bus on Valentine's Day, a girl with white-blond hair bursts into tears. "I love you, Anjela!" is spray-painted into the snowbank along the parking lot. I don't know if Angela is crying because she is happy or because her heart's desire can't spell.

[On the same day, she finds a Valentine's Day card on her locker and dreads opening it but finally does thinking it might have come from her lab partner. Instead, it's from Heather her only sort of friend who has dumped her because Melinda is killing her social standing]

My locker. The card is still there, a white patch of hope with my name on it. I tear it off and open it. Something falls to my feet. The card has a picture of two cutesy teddy bears sharing a pot of honey. I open it. "Thanks for understanding. You're the sweetest!" It is signed with a purple pen. "Good Luck!!! Heather." I bend down to find what dropped from the card. It was the friendship necklace I had given Heather in a fit of insanity around Christmas.

[her rapist goes to the same school as her which makes things worse. Here she runs into him on the way to school in a parking lot and he taunts her.]
BunnyRabbit bolts, leaving fast tracks in the snow. Getaway getaway getaway. Why didn't I run like this before when I was a one-piece talking girl?


[she also passes out in biology class dissecting a frog]:
The nurse calls my mom because I need stitches. The doctor stares into the back of my eyes with a bright light. Can she read the thoughts hidden there? If she can, what will she do? call the cops? Send me to the nuthouse? Do I want her to? I just want to sleep. The whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won't. I'll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head. Maybe I should wait until David Petrakis is a doctor, let him do it.