Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Speak is the story of a teenage girl (and I think it was written around the time my sister was in high school, so it's not quite my era but it's also not completely new) who experienced something over the summer that turns friends against her as she enters high school, and causes her to pull inside herself, away from her friends, away from her parents, away from most of her teachers. She doesn't stop speaking entirely, but she avoids it as much as possible, and for a long time there are few people to even notice.

I don't know if there was supposed to be a Big Reveal about why the main character of Speak (Melinda) has essentially stopped talking to her parents, friends, and teachers. If so, I guessed it long before the reveal was made, and so as awful as it was, it carried no huge emotional weight that I hadn't already felt as I read the chapters leading up to the reveal. I think the book is better for that, though. It's not meant to shock or appall, but to put the reader in the head of the teenage character and let the reader experience what she is experiencing. Anything Laurie Anderson fails to tell you until the right time is analogous to Melinda's avoidance of confronting the reasons for her own depression.

Speak is not a happy book, but it's also not an unhappy book. It's also by no means perfect, but it feels believable enough, and Melinda's voice feels real. The story drew me in, and as dark and difficult as it was to see the the character's story through the screen of her depression, the entire book is peppered with hopeful moments. It's very much a YA book, meant to appeal to a young adult audience, and it feels enough like a Big Issue book that I don't really feel the need to go read anything else by Laurie Halse Anderson. With Big Issues authors (like Jodi Picoult, for example) I can let them pull it off once before it starts to lose impact. But this book had impact. I wouldn't recommend it universally, but if you think it sounds worth reading, it probably is.