I’ve only read one other book by Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak), but this woman definitely knows how to write effective, moving YA. I feel the need to go get everything she’s ever written after finishing The Impossible Knife of Memory. “Leaning against my father, the sadness finally broke open inside me, hollowing out my heart and leaving me bleeding. My feet felt rooted in the dirt. There were more than two bodies buried here. Pieces of me that I didn’t even know were under the ground. Pieces of […]
Silenced
I have heard of Speak before — it’s been out since 2001 — but I never really knew what it was about. I happened to buy the 10 year anniversary edition at a used book sale. There’s a note from the author at the beginning, talking about what a huge response she’s received over the years from her readers about this book. She puts together a collection of lines from readers’ letters, and I swear, the damn thing had me in tears. That’s a powerful book, to move me […]
The Impossible, Interesting YA Novel
In 2014, Laurie Halse Anderson’s The Impossible Knife of Memory was nominated for a lot of awards. After finishing it this morning, I can totally see why. Hayley Rose Kincain is a teenager in upstate New York. She and her father have lived a nomadic existence for several years, until he insists they settle down so she can finish school. They move into his mother’s old home, and she enrolls in a local high school. There, she meets self-described Casanova Finnegan Ramos, and there, her […]
High school is twisted.
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Laurie Halse Anderson. I first read Speak as a sophomore in high school and it blew my mind (sidenote: I was taking a young adult literature course where Speak was the novel being discussed, and The Chancellor said something incredibly smart, and that’s how we met). I’ve made it a point to read everything she’s published since then, but a few novels have slipped through the cracks, and Twisted is one of them. I’m glad I […]