Some Girls Are, Courtney Summers

Regina Afton has worked hard to get to the top of the high school hierarchy. She's sacrificed a lot: her friends, her integrity, her conscience. When an incident at a party sparks off vicious and untrue rumours, she finds herself despised and alone, learning first-hand just what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the bullying she used to help deal out.

The mean-girl drama is nothing new in teen literature. I've reviewed similar books here at the blog: Speak, Before I Fall and Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood - and, of course, the name Regina not-so-subtly recalls Mean Girls. Some Girls Are was a pretty dark version of the story, unflinching in dealing with the inventive cruelty of teenage girls. In many such stories the victim wins out with their goodness, or rise above the pettiness of their peers by discovering their inner depths. But in this novel, the bad guys getting their just desserts would not be satisfying: after all, that is what this story's all about.

Regina's been a mean girl too long. She demonstrates feelings of regret and self-loathing for the popular girl she used to be, but she has faked so much in order to fit into the inner circle that she's lost touch with her inner goodness and decency. It's in there, but buried so deep that no one can see it any more. Regina is a complex narrator, and I wasn't quite sure how to view her. I wanted to sympathise with her, but she'd done some terrible things. Did she deserve all the abuse heaped upon her? "Nobody deserves that," said Michael, the closest thing Regina has to an ally all through her ordeal. We're not shown Regina's former cruelty first-hand, and though we see the results, she holds back from telling too much about what she'd done to make two thirds of her school actively hate her. I felt that Regina was an unreliable narrator, toning down the events of the past, censoring herself so as not to utterly alienate her audience. Something didn't quite ring true between how Regina presented herself on the page, and how her classmates saw her - 300 enemies are a lot. I also wanted to shake Regina at times for walking into the mean girls' traps, and giving them power over her.

Regina is not one to take bullying lying down, and it turns into an ugly war of revenge for revenge, spiraling out of control. For me, like for Regina, it was temporarily satisfying to see the bullies getting a taste of their own medicine, but that satisfaction is quickly replaced with unease and anxiety for what would happen next. I felt sure that the situation would escalate into disaster or tragedy, because I could not see either side backing down. Ultimately, I found the conclusion hugely anticlimactic and boggled at the author's decision to end the book the way that she did. Is that it? I wondered.

It's reading books like this that I feel grateful that I was never popular at school, with fewer expectations to live up to or compromises to make. Not that I was entirely guiltless in these matters, still moderating my Katie-ness (in fact in those days I was Kathy, not Katie, a more significant thing that you might think) in an attempt not to give people within and outside my "friendship" group reasons to pick on me. But the cost of fitting into a clique such as the Fearsome Fivesome is too high to ever be worthwhile.

Rachel's Holiday, Marian Keyes

"They tried to make me go to rehab; I said no, no, no." Amy Winehouse

Rachel's Holiday comes as a result of a mistake. Sure, Rachel Walsh takes drugs socially, but everyone does it in her circle of sophisticated friends in New York, it doesn't mean she's an addict. And yes, she understands that it looks like she attempted suicide when she had to be taken into hospital to get her stomach pumped, but really she was just buzzing and couldn't get to sleep so she just kept on taking sleeping pills to help, but not before jotting down a few ideas for poems which, okay, if you look at the notes out of context could possibly be construed as a "goodbye, cruel world" sort of message if you squint enough, but really, it's all just a huge misunderstanding and she's sure that it can all be sorted out.

But her parents send her goody-too-shoes sister Margaret over to bring her home to Ireland and check her into the Cloisters, a rehabilitation centre. Oh, well, Rachel needed a holiday anyway. She could do with a bit of aromatherapy and saunas and general pampering while everyone else got their heads sorted out. But when she gets to the Cloisters, it's not the swanky health spa she expected. Not only does she have to share a room - if you can call it that and not a broom cupboard - with an over-talkative older lady, but there are no saunas, no swimming pools, Rachel is expected to help with the housework and spend her days in group therapy having her childhood poked and picked at by an aggressive nun named Josephine. And no drugs at all. Not even for the people like Rachel who don't have any actual problems with them.

I was given Rachel's Holiday at a World Book Night, by a young lady who had "expected it to be a bit chicky, but it wasn't." It is an easy read, written in short chapters and compelling enough to ensure that I zipped through the 600+ pages in a day and a night, but it is not fluff. I realise that my understanding of "chick lit" is still a rather derogatory one of shoes, sex and shopping, no doubt influenced by Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic series. Marian Keyes' Rachel's Holiday is easy to read, women's fiction but it is not fluff. There is a good mix of humour and pathos as we get to understand Rachel and the other people in the Cloisters, all going through very different situations and yet facing the same personal problems and daily temptations.

You can tell from the start that Rachel is an unreliable narrator - she doth protest too much. At first she downplays her actions, failing to mention the full extent of her drugs habit and the means she must go to in order to keep it up. We begin to learn the truth through other people's reactions, for example, Rachel describes herself as a big girl, but when she arrives back in Ireland, people remark how skinny she is - a comment that goes over Rachel's head but not the reader's. Despite her deep denial, constant shirking of all responsibility for herself or others and self-absorption, I really liked Rachel. Whether I would have liked her if the story had been told through another person's eyes, or by a third person narrator, is another matter. I suspect not. But as it was, I felt for her when it finally hits home to her how far she's fallen. As she makes the effort to get her life back on track, not always succeeding but trying again, I really feel for her and want her to succeed and make a good life for herself. An enjoyable, lightish read with plenty of substance and a decided lack of shoe shopping.

South Riding, Winifred Holtby

I wouldn’t have heard of Winifred Holtby’s South Riding if it hadn’t been for the new 3-part BBC adaptation masterminded by Andrew Davies of Pride and Prejudice and Bleak House fame and due to start airing in the UK tonight. A largely forgotten work, it has been compared with George Eliot’s Middlemarch, being a portrait of an entire community at a difficult time – in this case, the 1930s, between two world wars and an era of depression. South Riding has been hailed by novelist Sarah Waters as “a twentieth century classic,” so I have chosen it for Sarah’s Back to  the Classics challenge.

Although there is a large cast of central, viewpoint characters, the main protagonist is Miss Sarah Burton, who is newly appointed as headmistress of a girls’ high school in the South Riding, Yorkshire. At thirty nine, Sarah was much younger than her competition for the job, and a very modern woman. She is full of idealism and a love for life, and full of ambition to encourage her girls to realise their potential, not to be held back by their sex or poverty.

Holtby also shows us the details of the local government trying to do their best at a time of financial crisis, covering themes and issues that are all too familiar to a modern reader, and it’s sad to see how little has changed. The slums of the South Riding may be gone, but there is much that resonates – the trap and stigma of unemployment and poverty – Mr Holly, for example, is described as being two shillings a week better off when on the dole than when working as most of his wages go towards his travel. His daughter, Lydia, is an excellent student and a scholarship girl at the high school, but she can’t afford to go to college and fulfil her potential, and her responsibility to her younger siblings keeps her out of school.

"A twentieth-century classic"
- Sarah Waters

South Riding, like Middlemarch, shows everyone’s point of view in turn, good and bad. My first impression of Councillor Huggins was the tired old stereotype of religious hypocrisy, preaching fire and brimstone from the pulpit and in his spare time ogling pretty ladies in their swimming costumes on the beach. But we get to know him as a compassionate man, with a good heart and an agonising awareness of his own weaknesses. It’s painful to watch him trying and trying to make amends and digging himself deeper into trouble. Then, there is sad, tormented farmer and landowner Robert Carne, who is as good as widowed with a mad wife who doesn’t recognise him. He is on the verge of financial ruin and fears that his teenage daughter Midge will go the same way as his wife. Midge, herself, is a bratty, spoilt kid, but underlying is loneliness and a desperate longing to be popular.

With such a large cast of viewpoint characters, it’s inevitable that some get only a little page space, but this does not mean that they’re not fleshed-out properly. Holtby brings her characters to life in a chapter or two, then they pop up a bit later in the background with an update on a situation you can quite believe has been carrying on away from the readers’ eyes.

The casting of the BBC adaptation features several familiar actors, faces who seem to pop up everywhere, such as Anna Maxwell Martin, (Bleak House) David Morrissey (Blackpool) and Penelope Wilton (Doctor Who’s Harriet Jones Former Prime Minister (Yes We Know Who You Are) and Downton Abbey.) All are actors I admire and enjoy watching, and this as much as anything else persuaded me that South Riding is a book and series that might be worth a look at.

There is of course a little bit of romance – name me a book without it! – or at least the hope of romance between Sarah and Carne. This came as no surprise: Sarah is the heroine after all, and Carne is a brooding, tortured soul – as well as being played by the rather handsome David Morrissey. Their relationship was clearly meant to be a Pride and Prejudice- style hatred which reveals itself to be a disguise for attraction. Yet in the book, Sarah’s first realisation of being in love seemed to come from the blue, prompted by a few grumpy encounters in which I, at least, noticed no signs of attraction. No doubt on the screen their scenes will be slow-paced to allow for many long, smouldering looks, supported by appropriate music. But we’ll see.

 

For UK viewers, the first episode of South Riding is on BBC1 at 9PM tonight.
In the USA, PBS have scheduled part 1 for May 1st this year.

If you enjoy this, you may like:
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
TV: Cranford (or the book by Elizabeth Gaskell)
TV: Lark Rise to Candleford (or the book by Flora Thompson)

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

It's the beginning of December, and for the first time I can remember at this time of year, there is a thick layer of snow on the ground. A drunken-looking snowman named Roderick is staring through the dining room window with his brussels sprouts for eyes, wearing a college scarf and mittens. Yesterday I went shopping for Christmas nibbles: sugared almonds, turkish delight, chocolate mints, etc. It was the perfect time for my annual re-read of A Christmas Carol.

I'm not going to recap the story here, as we all know it, even if we've never read the book. If it's not Mickey Mouse, it's the Muppets - everyone knows at least one version of the Charles Dickens classic. After all, it is something that has helped to shape what we think of as an old-fashioned Christmas. The words Scrooge, and "Bah! Humbug!" are universally recognised and applied to anyone who expresses anything but unconditional joy in the festive season. But on this reading, I found myself thinking that it is not Scrooge's dislike of tinsel and plum pudding that is his doom, but his callousness towards his fellow man. To Dickens the social commentator, celebrating Christmas is more than a time to be jolly and eating a big meal with the family, before arguing about whether to watch the Queen's Speech or the EastEnders doom-and-gloom seasonal special on TV. It's more than pretending to be grateful for the socks and reindeer jumper knitted by Granny.* Scrooge's nephew puts it best:

"I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of the people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therfore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it."

Ross Kemp as Eddie Scrooge in a
21st century take on the tale.

Christmas is interchangeable with remembering the one who the festival is named for and showing unconditional love to everyone, friend or stranger, and especially those with nothing. This is the author of Oliver Twist, after all. It surprised me that it was the jolly giant, the Ghost of Christmas Present, who showed the harshest judgement of Scrooge's callousness, quoting his own lines about surplus population, prisons and workhouses, back at him while his heart has been touched for the first time in a cold, cruel life. It is the Ghost of Christmas Present who reveals mankind's starving children: Ignorance and Want, in a scene often left out of adaptations. After all, Ignorance and Want are subjects that need to be addressed now, in Christmas Present, not in some dim and distant future.

Michael Gambon and classical singer
Katherine Jenkins are set to star with
Matt Smith in this year's Doctor Who
Christmas Special.

There are so many adaptations of the book: animated and live-action, colour and black-and-white, period and modern-day, that it would be impossible,or at least, highly impractical, to watch them all over one year. The first I ever saw was a very short version, Mickey's Christmas Carol, and I recently saw for the first time last year's Disney animated film with the voice of Jim Carrey. I'm not usually a fan of Carrey's acting - he tends towards melodramatic overacting in my opinion - but this was a remarkable adaptation, taken almost word-for-word and scene-for-scene from the book. Most of the moments that you might think were added for effect were in fact taken directly from Dickens' own words, and it would be a good one to watch for someone put off by Dickens' wordy style. (This is, after all, the author who takes a page to establish that "Marley was dead, to begin with," a page to illustrate that the French revolution occurred at a time much like any other and that people couldn't describe if it was good or bad.) There is an excellent modern-day version starring Ross Kemp, once a Mitchell from EastEnders, and even Doctor Who appears to be getting in on the act for its Christmas Special this year. But there is one version that I have to watch every December, that Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without: The Muppet Christmas Carol.

All together now...
"There goes Mr. Humbug,
There goes Mr. Grim.
If they gave a prize for being mean,
The winner would be him..."

*Actually, if you look in the shops, there are a lot of jumpers with reindeer motifs and suchlike.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Of all the novels I've read over my lifetime, there are several which I recommend to friends, a fair few that I am surprised if someone hasn't read, and just a handful that I think everybody must read! To Kill A Mockingbird is in the last category.

I first read To Kill a Mockingbird for one of my GCSE English modules. Correction: I read a playscript adaptation, which captured the gist of the novel while omitting a lot that didn't directly affect the main plot. Even at fourteen or so I resented the truncated version, just as I was grateful for being in the only class in the year group to actually study a novel (Lord of the Flies) instead of a few odd short stories in The Anthology: novels were harder work but the alternative felt like cheating. I wanted something I could really get my teeth into. (Looking back, it's clear I was destined to study English Literature.) Thinking about it now, though, it seems that by setting us To Kill a Mockingbird for the obligatory drama module, the exam board were slipping us another classic novel in disguise, and a couple of years later I read the book properly for the first time.

When Scout and Jem are given air rifles, their father, renowned lawyer Atticus Finch tells them:

"'I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'"

Scout recalls:

"That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.

"'Your father's right,' she said. 'Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'"

But what has this to do with the main story, and why does the title come from this small conversation? The image comes up later on in a newspaper editorial on the main plot: the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, accused of the rape of a white girl, Mayella Ewell. Atticus is given the job of defending Tom, and much to the townspeople's displeasure, is intent on defending him as well as he possibly can. It is obvious that Tom is innocent, but this is the Deep South in the 1930s, and there is simply no way a jury would favour a black man over a white.

The novel is told by Scout, or Jean Louise Finch as she is named on her birth certificate, who is six at the start and about nine when the story ends. To her innocent mind, it is painfully obvious how things should be, and we feel her bafflement at discovering the ignorance and hypocrisy of the adults involved in the case. Everyone despise the Ewell family, especially father Bob Ewell, a drunken, violent, cowardly layabout. The Ewells are seen as the lowest of the low, and Tom Robinson is a kind, church-going family man, whose only crime was to feel sorry for Mayella Ewell. It is so obvious. And yet. And still. They are white.

Throwing books across the room is usually reserved only for bad writing, but I was sorely tempted on this reading of To Kill a Mockingbird out of sheer emotion. I wanted to shake some sense into the people, all the people.

My sister was reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett at the same time I read To Kill a Mockingbird, and when discussing the books we both found ourselves wondering, in her words, "whether I would be so stupid and brainwashed if I'd lived back then. It seems like another world." Would we just accept the prejudices and injustices because That's Just The Way Things Are. In Atticus Finch we see someone who does not, who fights for justice and equality. In 2003, Atticus was voted as the greatest hero by the American Film Institute, against all the more "obvious," action characters out there. His heroism is summed up by his quote at the end of Part One:

"'[Courage is] when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."

Atticus doesn't change Maycomb County overnight, but towards the end we start to see a few people acknowedging the injustices in the system and in their own nature, start to question the things they have previously accepted. Unexpected people show support for Atticus, when previously they criticised him, and speak out against the racism that infests the town. If only baby-steps, there is a little movement. People are starting to think.

I've never seen the film of the book, but by all accounts it lives up to the book and is worth watching. I intend to find myself a copy soon.

Boys Don't Cry, Malorie Blackman

It must be fourteen or fifteen years ago I first read a Malorie Blackman book. Operation Gadgetman was the first, and Hacker and Thief. One contained all sorts of computing references (almost certainly Hacker) and "modems," which I had no idea what they were. This was a few years before the Internet could be routinely found in homes; our computer was the old Atari with a dot-matrix printer. We didn't even have the Internet in school.

A few years later, when I had moved into the young adult age group, I discovered Noughts and Crosses, a dystopia which was heartbreaking and brilliant, probably the first book I read which ends in a particular way for a main character - to say more would be spoilers galore. Noughts and Crosses found its way onto the shortlist for my A-Level English coursework for comparison with Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I didn't think teen fiction, no matter how good it was, would be considered by teachers. (I now suspect I might have been wrong.)

After three sequels in the world of Noughts and Crosses, Blackman returns to the recogniseable world to tell a powerful story about teenage single parenthood, and is unique in taking the viewpoint of a seventeen-year-old father whose ex-girlfriend shows up with a baby, informs him he is the father, pops out to the shops - and runs. I've read quite a few books about teenage single mums: Mary Hooper's Megan books and Dyan Sheldon's And Baby Makes Two are the ones that stick in my mind from my teen years. Blackman wrote Boys Don't Cry realising that the issue has been covered entirely one-sidedly, and that teenage fathers are just expected to do a runner. Blackman shows another side to the story. When Dante gets up one morning, he's expecting his A-Level results and an acceptance into university. Instead he finds himself the father of little Emma, and in just a few moments he has to rethink his entire life plan.

Boys Don't Cry is also about what it means to be a man, and we see this through Dante, his younger brother Adam and his father. Dante's mother died several years before and the family don't like to talk about their feelings. Adam is openly gay, but that is Not Something They Talk About. Dante feels enormous frustration that no matter what he does, it never seems to be enough for his father to show pride or love. Something terrible has to happen before the three will open up to each other.

In previous works by Blackman, there are a mixture of male and female narrators, and it is interesting to see a female writing from an exclusively male perspective: mostly Dante but with some chapters from Adam's point of view. She captures the boys' voices well, and reading Dante's story I found myself transported back to high school - he could quite easily have been one of my classmates. Adam is a slightly arrogant, obnoxious yet likeable younger brother, and the dynamics between them were of an entirely believable sibling relationship. In the later scenes, when the family start talking to each other about what's on their hearts, I did find myself wondering whether this was really how a family of men would interact or if it was a female writer shaping the world to how she thinks it ought to be.

Boys Don't Cry did not take me very long to read, but I know it will take a long time to forget. There seems to be quite a high teenage pregnancy rate on the Isle of Wight, where I live, and Blackman challenged my thoughts and prejudices about teen parents, and evoked sympathy and compassion. Boys might not cry, but this girl certainly did.

Hold Still, Nina LaCour

Mom says Ingrid's name and I start to hum, not the melody to a song, just one drawn-out note. I know it makes me seem crazy, I know it won't make anything change, but it's better than crying, it's better than screaming, it's better than listening to what they're telling me.

When Ingrid commits suicide, high school junior Caitlin is left lonely, grief-stricken and agonising about whether she could have saved her best friend. When the new term starts up, Caitlin tries to carry on as usual, reminded with every step of her absent friend. Her classmates, teachers and even her own parents don't know how to act around her while she tries to carry on: a girl she hasn't spoken to for years makes a well-meant but not-quite-heartfelt offer of support, one of the cool boys shows too much of a morbid interest. Caitlin and Ingrid's favourite teacher Ms Delani can't even acknowledge Caitlin's existence. Then Caitlin finds Ingrid's journal under her bed. What she reads within is painful: an honest account of Ingrid's losing battle with depression, left as an attempt to explain her decision to end her life.

With its first-person, stream-of-consciousness narrative style and the main character struggling to cope after a horrific, life-changing event, I found myself reminded of Speak. Although Caitlin is not as alone as Melinda - everyone knows what has happened - she too suffers in silence, unable to express herself. Like Melinda in Speak, Caitlin finds solace in art, in this case her photography (at least when she and Ms Delani have acknowledged their mutual grief) and also in her carpentry project: building a treehouse. (Trees, art - I wonder if Nina LaCour read Speak!) I found her parents quite difficult to sympathise with as they show little patience with her, despite not having the Sordinos' (of Speak) excuse of ignorance. I understand they would feel helpless as their daughter goes to pieces but they don't seem to acknowledge her reasons at all. The rest of the characters, however, are very well-written, especially new girl Dylan, who gravitates towards Caitlin as if she knows this is someone in need of a friend. Ingrid, as seen through her journal and Caitlin's memories is a very vivid character, and "not the sort of person you'd expect to kill herself," which is no doubt the point of the book: you can't tell what someone is going through beneath the surface.

I found Hold Still to be a fascinating, very sensitive but rather painful book. It does not romanticise the subjects of suicide and depression, but shows frankly the ugly effect of the unanswered questions and the ragged wounds felt by friends and family left behind. At the same time, the book never judges Ingrid, and through her journal I found myself drawn into dark places that, to be honest, I'd rather not go, in the mind of someone who can see no way out of her unhappiness. But Hold Still also shows how, although the grief will not go away, Caitlin is able to cope and carry on with her life, remembering her friend but not letting the past overwhelm her.

No and Me, Delphine De Vigan

No and Me is another of Richard and Judy's book club picks. This time I have got in early with my blog, as it is fifth on the list and not due to be reviewed on TV for a few weeks yet. No and Me is a deceptively simple book, translated from the French. It is one of those borderline books that appears in both adult and teen sections of the bookshop under different covers.

Lou, the narrator, is an intellectially bright but emotionally and socially young girl. At thirteen, she is in a class with fifteen-year-olds (and a seventeen-year-old who has been held back as much as she has been skipped ahead.) She is an only child, and desperately lonely. Her parents seem to have little time for her, as her mother's battle with depression is enough for them to cope with. Lou befriends No (Nolwenn,) a young homeless woman, and interviews her for a school project. When the project is over, Lou realises that she can't just abandon her new friend, or close her eyes now they have been opened to the troubles faced by many around her city.

Lou's narration is full of the hopes and idealism of a good-hearted thirteen-year-old, thinking that she can at least make a difference to one other lonely person's life and help her back into society. De Vigan portrays the innocence of an adolescence with an undertone of sadness. The more jaded adult reader knows that all will not turn out as tidily and happily as Lou hopes, but at the same time, her innocence provokes anger in the question, why not? You find yourself wondering if Lou could be right after all, hoping for a happy ending and trying to fight the deeper knowledge that it won't happen.

No is, of course, the central character of the novel, and yet it seems we never get to know her, really and honestly. She is a spiky yet sympathetic girl - only eighteen - full of the anger of someone who has had to fight from a very young age to survive. Yet in some of her scenes with Lou we get to see a softer, gentler side to her character, the inner child that street life hasn't managed to crush out of her. But much of her character as shown in the book is of the conflict between the different ways she is viewed by society. For Lou she is a friend who really knows what it is to be lonely, but also a project. De Vigan shows lots of different projects and experiments that Lou works on to keep her brain active and boredom away, and there is the nagging sense that No is just another. Lou quotes the fox from The Little Prince:

"To me, you are just a little boy like a hundred thousand little boys. And I have no need of you. To you, I am just a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes.
"But if you tame me, we shall need one another. To me, you will be unique. And I shall be unique to you."

All the lonely Lou wants is to be needed. To the adults; to Lou's parents, the social worker and even perhaps to the prejudices of the reader, No is a lost cause. She just doesn't fit into Lou's world.

Just as Lou needs No, so it seems No needs Lou, repeating the same questions again and again, seeking for reassurance:

"We're together, aren't we, Lou?"

"Do you trust me?"

Even the naive Lou feels a little discomfort at the questions, and recalls:

"I can't stop myself thinking of the phrase I read somewhere, I can't remember where: 'He who's always assuring himself of your trust will be the first to betray it.' And I try to chase those words out of my head."

But once thought, once put onto paper, the doubt remains. Still, when the inevitable betrayal and disappointment happened, I found myself wondering again what No's true motives were. Was she being selfish, was she the untamed wild girl not wanting to be held back by ties to a thirteen-year-old, or did she act to keep Lou from making a terrible mistake? No answers are given to this question. The emotions I felt at the ending challenged me: I felt relief when No left Lou, and at the same time guilt.

No and Me is a slim book with less than 250 pages, quick and easy to read, but difficult to forget.

Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. We are here to help you.

2. You will have enough time to get to your class before the bell rings.

3. The dress code will be enforced.

4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds.

5. Our football team will win the championship this year.

6. We expect more of you here.

7. Guidance counsellors are always available to listen.

8. Your schedule was created with your needs in mind.

9. Your locker combination is private.

10. These are the years you look back on fondly.

Melinda Sordino was an ordinary teenager, happy and popular, until the party the summer before she started high school. Now her grades are slipping, her friends shun her and she skulks through the corridors silently, just trying to get through the day without drawing attention to herself. If only she could tell someone why she really called the police that night.

Speak is a brave, important Young Adult novel that I first read when I was about Melinda's age, and it struck a chord with me. Thankfully I'd never experienced the horrors she had, but I knew how it felt to be the outcast at school, hiding behind my books and trying to persuade everyone I didn't exist. Halse Anderson captures the cliqueyness, injustice and sheer brutality of high school existance. The novel deals with a difficult subject sensitively, and despite her depression, Melinda's narration provides sarcastic humour all the way through with her biting observations about school, her teachers and fellow students, giving the staff names like Mr Neck ("A predator approaches: grey jock buzz cut, whistle around a neck thicker than his head") and Hairwoman. ("My English teacher has no face.")

Melinda finds refuge in a disused supply cupboard that she customises with a poster of Maya Angelou, who she views as a role model. The only other person she feels able to trust is her art teacher, Mr Freeman after spending her lunch times working on her art project to avoid the nightmarish cafeteria. Melinda uses her art project, "Tree" to help her understand and express her emotions through the school year, and it is Mr Freeman she confides in when finally she finds herself able to speak up.

Speak has been made into a film starring a teenage Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame as Melinda. Though it doesn't cover everything in the book, it captures the soul of the story very well and is certainly worth a watch if you can get hold of it.

I was moved to reread and review this novel after discovering that the other side of the pond a wannabe moral guardian with the improbable name of Scroggins has deemed Speak to be inappropriate reading for young people, due to its addressing a difficult subject, namely rape, and is campaigning to have it banned from school libraries. Now, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he wants to protect young people. Nonetheless, it is very worrying that he is more upset about a book in which a girl tries to cope after being raped, and eventually seeks help, than about the heartbreaking number of people across the world, across the USA, in his own state and probably among the same students he is trying to protect, who don't know how to cope or where to turn after rape. While reading people's twitter and blog comments, I discovered that many people who have been in Melinda's situation found Speak gave them the courage to speak up and seek healing for themselves. Scroggins cannot be allowed to get his way as by doing so he would send out quite the opposite message to the book and risks sending victims of sexual crime back into silence and despair. It seems that - like many who call for the banning of books - that he hasn't actually read it, as his argument is that Speak is pornographic. If he has read it, and that is his perception, I fear it speaks more about himself than the novel.