21 Oct / Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
If you had any doubts before, pick up some of Laurie Halse Anderson‘s titles – her now-classic Speak and Wintergirls, to start – and you can’t help but realize that today’s high schools can be utter hell. [You could also go check out the new documentary from An Inconvenient Truth director, Waiting for ‘Superman’ and watch how the public school system is failing too many of our children …] Socially and academically, how kids survive school these days just might be a minor miracle.
In Twisted, Anderson adroitly takes on the voice of a 17-year-old teenage boy. Tyler Miller enters his senior year transformed. He’s spent the summer doing hard labor – “Mandatory community service … Court-ordered restitution for the Foul Deed” – which has turned him “from Nerd Boy to Tyler the Amazing Hulk.” That ‘Foul Deed’ – desecrating the school building with some eye-popping graffiti – has given him a new bad-boy reputation to go with his new brawn.
The one person who he thought would never notice … notices. Bethany Milbury, the school’s Alpha Girl, decides she just might be interested. But Bethany’s attention is not without major consequences – her brother Chip is a popular bully threatened by Tyler’s new muscles, and her father just happens to be Tyler’s father’s less-than-forthright boss.
Blinded by testosterone, Tyler falls prey to Bethany’s seeming vulnerability and Chip’s macho machinations. He ends up accused of a serious criminal offense and is quickly ostracized by the entire school, including the nervous administration (so much for innocent until proven guilty). His dysfunctional parents – his not-willing-to-admit-alcoholic mother, his controlling and abusive father – care more about what others think than their own child. Only his younger sister and his estranged childhood best friend remain staunchly by his side …
Anderson’s opening pages are ominous: “Everybody told me to be a man. Nobody told me how,” screams in bold black and red. “Note: This is not a book for children,” precedes the novel’s first words. Reading these books on our teenage daughter’s supplementary school reading list is enough to give me palpitations at the very least … but once I finally calm down, I also have ready insight for starting some challenging conversations. We parents need the education, too!
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2007