Speak
By: Laurie Halse Anderson / Narrated By: Mandy Siegfried
Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
Sadly, this is a MUST-listen for teens and even ‘tween girls
I went into listening to Speak thinking it was going to be about a girl who’s an outcast, feels misunderstood, wishes for so much more while trying to fit in. And indeed, the audiobook starts off that way, with young Melinda dealing with the snubs and glares of other students. Right away we learn she called the cops that busted up a party earlier that summer, and that’s very much a no-no, will earn you the wrath of one and all for years to come. Now that they’re no longer in middle school, she and her friends have split apart, and she is utterly alone, looking for another person who doesn’t quite fit in.
So she starts a relationship with a girl named Heather, and we learn that it’s all about Heather. Melinda doesn’t really contribute to the friendship, she just goes along.
And that’s where we start noticing things about Melinda. She doesn’t share much, talk much, open up much. We see that she’s just noticed that she really should’ve washed her hair as it’s filthy. She doesn’t care about the clothes that she’s outgrowing (and neither do her distracted parents). She doesn’t speak but bites her lips until they bleed and scab over, causing other students to comment. She lives completely in her head, and we, the listeners, live with her, feeling a scream build up within ourselves even as it builds up in Melinda. She’s not just quiet—she’s biting back screams.
This is a book that, unfortunately, would definitely benefit the younger members of our society, seeing as we still live very much in a: Boys Will Be Boys culture. It gives a voice to a girl mute with pain, so cut off from her emotions that it feels good when she harms herself. I work with teen-aged girls, and I can tell you that a lot goes on in their heads, and a lot goes on in their lives—things they don’t share but that show up in how they dress, how they act.
What gives Speak wings, however, is that through it all, Melinda finds healing in things that she’s learning, whether in art (trying to breathe life into a depiction of a tree), or in biology (learning how seeds work, learning how things grow and thrive). Even as she gets more out of control, slipping every day, so does she begin a comeback, doing very tender, very loving things.
I kinda didn’t buy the whole denouement/dramatic climax, but as the book is written for a younger audience, I can see how it would be empowering to girls. And the last scene? Except for the very last line of the book (I know, I know: I should just get over it!), it had me with a rock solid lump in my throat. It’s also narrated very well by Mandy Siegfried. I wasn’t familiar with her going in, but I totally bought her as a troubled young girl. She amps up the emotion, the frustration, the utter fear and helplessness in being trapped in Melinda’s world, in Melinda’s head.
At barely 5+ hours, Speak really packs a wallop. Though I’m older by far than Melinda is, so very much resonated with me, reminding me of past pains, past humiliation.
And: past triumphs!
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