Honor Society members: stoners. Cheerleaders: cutters. Debate-team members: shoplifters. Mom’s pills are there for the taking. Dad’s vodka makes first period easier.
“High school is where the zombification process becomes deadly,” according to senior Hayley Kincain, first-person narrator of Laurie Halse Anderson’s latest young-adult novel, The Impossible Knife of Memory (Viking). But Hayley herself is no zombie. She’s a reader’s guide to the challenges she’s facing and a voice for non-zombies everywhere facing the same.
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“People who have to announce that they are trustworthy deserve to be lied to,” Hayley wisely observes in these pages.
But as shown by her successful series of novels — starting with the critically acclaimed Speak — Laurie Halse Anderson hasn’t had to announce she’s trustworthy. Her work has proven it; her large following attests to it.
On a separate topic: the work that goes into writing — her writing especially: Follow Anderson’s blog posts on her website for some free and first-rate guidance counseling. See Anderson for yourself when she visits The Booksellers at Laurelwood to discuss and sign The Impossible Knife of Memory on Sunday, January 19th, from 2 to 3 p.m.
