Pip has known and liked Sal since childhood he’d supported her when she was being bullied in middle school. There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.Įveryone believes that Salil Singh killed his girlfriend, Andrea Bell, five years ago-except Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character.

But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. The plot is gripping and the characters are powerfully drawn, but it is its raw and unvarnished look at the dynamics of the high school experience that makes this a novel that will be hard for readers to forget. When the unthinkable happens-the same upperclassman who raped her at the party attacks her again’something within the new Melinda says no, and in repelling her attacker, she becomes whole again. Freeman, her art teacher, who works with her to help her express what she has so deeply repressed. Few people penetrate her shell one of them is Mr. She withdraws more and more into herself, rarely talking, cutting classes, ignoring assignments, and becoming more estranged daily from the world around her.

By the time school starts, she is completely alone, and utterly desolate.

She tells no one of her rape, and the other students, even her best friends, turn against her for ruining their good time. Shocked and scared, she calls the police, who break up the party and send everyone home. At the end of the summer before she enters high school, Melinda attends a party at which two bad things happen to her. A frightening and sobering look at the cruelty and viciousness that pervade much of contemporary high school life, as real as today’s headlines.

Shout by laurie anderson