Twisted [Import] [Paperback]

Laurie Halse Anderson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Hodder Children's Books (March 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0340956453
• ISBN-13: 978-0340956458
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,713,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laurie Halse (rhymes with "waltz") Anderson pretended she was a polar bear when she walked to school through the snow of Syracuse, New York. As a little girl, she would pound away at her father's old typewriter for hours, writing newspaper columns, stories, and letters. She loved watching her father write poetry and reading the funnies on the floor of his office. Laurie fell in love with words when her second-grade teacher taught her how to write haiku. Her favorite book is the dictionary, which is a good thing because she is a terrible speller. She tried to read every book in her school library, a heavenly place. She loves librarians! One of her favorite books was Heidi. This led to curiosity about foreign cultures. As a senior in high school, she was an American Field Service exchange student to Denmark, where she lived on a pig farm. She skipped both her prom and graduation ceremonies and had a great time there. She can still speak Danish.

Laurie Halse Anderson never intended to be an author. At Georgetown University, she majored in foreign languages and linguistics. She hit the real world with no idea of what kind of work she wanted to do. She tried everything, including cleaning banks, milking cows and working as a stockbroker. She hated all of it. Working as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer was a slight improvement, but she eventually quit to write books. After eight long, rejection-filled years, she has finally qualified as an overnight success.

Laurie's books for children and teenagers have attracted a lot of attention. Her first novel, Speak, was a National Book Award Finalist, a Michael L. Printz Honor book, a New York Times bestseller, and an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. Publisher's Weekly, called Speak "a stunning first novel," in which Ms. Anderson "uses keen observations and vivid imagery to pull readers into the head of an isolated teenager." Speak has been translated into sixteen foreign languages, including Chinese and Catalan. In 2005, the movie version was released. In addition to novels, Laurie writes chapter books for elementary age children and picture books for the pre-school set. She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award, given by the American Library Association for significant and lasting achievement in young adult literature, in 2009.

Laurie lives in Northern New York with her husband, Scot, and their dog, Kezzie. Scot designed and built a writing cottage for Laurie, where she writes daily. Along with writing, she enjoys gardening, running and hanging with her family.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brutally Honest Insight Into the Teenage American Male Pysche., April 15, 2007

By 

tvtv3 "tvtv3" (Sorento, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Twisted (Hardcover)

TWISTED is a novel from Laurie Halse Anderson (author of SPEAK) that examines the mindset of the typical American suburban teenage male. The story is told from the point of view of Tyler Miller. Tyler was just an average, overlooked high school student until the end of this junior year. He did well in his classes, but because he didn't play sports, come from a wealthy family, or have a great physique he was a just one of many nameless faces at George Washington High School. Tyler was tired of being a nobody and decided that he would do something to get the entire school to recognize him and at the end of his junior year committed the Foul Deed. The Foul Deed gained him high school infamy, but it also forced him to sell his car and earned him a summer of community service working with the schools maintenance and janitorial staff and six months of probation. He spent most of his summer tarring roofs and doing landscaping work. By the end of the summer he had ended his growth spurt topping out around six feet and his flabby frame was as solid as chiseled granite.

Tyler likes his new look and isn't the only one. The most popular girl in school, the queen bee, Bethany Milbury suddenly starts noticing Tyler. Tyler's sister, Hannah, who begins high school as a freshman also notices Tyler's new physique and uses it to her advantage on the first day of school. Tyler had liked Bethany since grade school. She is his dream girl. But there are some big obstacles. Besides the obvious, that Bethany and Tyler are from two completely different worlds, there's also the fact that Bethany's Dad is Tyler's Dad's boss and that Bethany's twin brother Chip is Tyler's worst enemy. Somehow Tyler is able to overcome these obstacles and the school year begins as the best of his high school career. But events at a rowdy party after a football game turn everything upside down and Tyler finds himself looking at a possible jail sentence for a crime he didn't commit. He thinks about committing suicide and he plans to run away. Everything in his life is all screwed up and the only thing he is sure about is how complicated and twisted life has become.

I know that Laurie Halse Anderson gained a huge amount of public and critical acclaim with her novel, SPEAK. I haven't read that book, yet, but knew from recommendations from friends who have read that book what an excellent writer she is. TWISTED just reinforced everything I had been told.

The story is a very honest and brutal examination at the inner struggles that a typical suburban teenage American male goes through. I work with teenagers on a regular basis and I was once an American teenage male myself (though I wasn't from the suburbs) so I can relate a great deal to the character of Tyler Miller. However, I also found the novel to be rather disturbing because in reading about Tyler and his struggles I see how far we (as people) have changed in the past ten to fifteen years and it frightens me.

We live in a culture and society that is constantly changing. Some people would argue that these changes are for the better. To an extent, I would agree. But only to an extent. Change can be good, but it isn't always good and change just for the sake of change is very seldom a good thing. Traditions and the status quo can sometimes become a barrier to creativity and originality, but they have their place in society and culture even though they are unfortunately systematically being erased little by little. In such a culture, boys no longer know how to become men. Physically, many boys appear to be men, but their emotions and mentality remain that of a boy. Advertising saturates us with messages that conflict with our innermost sense of self, yet appeals to the most primal urges within each of us and this causes old boys and young men to have a mental life full of twisted confusion and frustration.

Then there's the public education system itself. I'm a committed teacher, but I'm also a realist when it comes to educating secondary students. Anyone who doesn't want to acknowledge that our public education system is messed up is living in an imaginary world. In the United States we have attempted to do what no other country in history has ever done before by providing the same basic education to everyone regardless of ability. It's a noble ideal. Unfortunately the ideal will never be realized if the current system remains the way it is. Extremely talented and creative children are being left behind, their gifts and talents unacknowledged and unrecognized while someone who is able to fill in enough little circles properly in the right amount of time is lavished with praise. Then there's the whole issue with how public high schools in America have become little more than semi-restricted centers of social experimentation instead of the pantheons devoted to education, civic training, and morality that they are supposed to be.

TWISTED deals with all these issues and at times it can be quite bleak. Yet, the book is a book of hope. Tyler has to face his inner demons but they don't ultimately conquer him. Not only that, but he's not alone. Outside of his family he has his best friend, Yoda. At school his favorite teacher is his English teacher, Mr. Salvatore who is concerned for Tyler and his well being. These characters in addition to Tyler's mother, sister, and the high school janitorial crew help Tyler realize how unique and special that he is. He recognizes this, but doesn't fully understand it for quite sometime. Every teenager needs people like this in their lives and I weep for those who don't have anyone or think that they don't because I've seen first hand what happens to kids who don't.

TWISTED is prefaced by a short warning that declares "NOTE: THIS IS NOT A BOOK FOR CHILDREN." I'm glad that warning is there because though TWISTED is marketed as a young adult novel, it's a novel not written for children and is aimed at adults. There is a lot of crude and foul language, there is a great deal of violence, and the book is filled with images of sexuality. I know that there are many teenagers will read this book and I hope that when they do they can take something positive away from it. However, I hope that more adults than teenagers will read it. However, TWISTED is so insightful and powerful that it's a book that any adult who works with teenage boys should require themselves to read.

31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars twisted indeed, July 28, 2007

By 

E. M. Bristol "bibliophile" (boston, mass) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Twisted (Hardcover)

Tyler Miller, former nerd, returns for his senior year with a new buff bod, courtesy of the manual community service he was forced to perform for graffitting the school. To his surprise, school Queen Bee Bethany Milsbury starts paying attention to him. This causes conflict with his nemesis, Bethany's twin brother Chip, and is complicated by the fact that Bethany's dad is his father's boss. When he rejects her (drunken) advances at a party, things become complicated when anonymous nude camera photos of Bethany wind up on the Internet. Suddenly, the police are paying attention to the former school defacer and he faces hostility from the other students. Like Melinda in "Speak," he has a dysfunctional family and minimal support from peers and adults. As he begins to implode from the pressure, finding a way to clear his name and stand up to the bullies in his life looks more and more difficult.

Pros: The sympathetic characters (Hannah and Yoda) were appealing, but the bullies and Bethany, the school princess, were stereotypes. Other messages were basically what we've seen in teen movie after teen movie. Abusing your kid is bad because he will eventually snap. (Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Messing up in Little League scars child and dad for life. (Parenthood). Rich people are soulless, decadent zombies. (Virtually every movie ever made.) I wish the author had tried to turn the formula a little more inside out, the way the "Ordinary People" author did when she made the Bad Dad a Mom. I enjoyed the book until the end, but felt it painted an inaccurate portrait of what recovering from clinical depress is like. It's usually two steps forward and four steps back at a time for the average person. You don't just reach a turning point, gain the ability to stand up to anyone in your way, and then your tormentors start backing down in record numbers. Melinda's journey from victim to survivor in "Speak" was far more believable because it took place over an entire school year, not a semester like in "Twisted."

(This is where the review loses objectivity.)
Some reviewers have written about the great message this book sends. I disagree. Standing up to one's abusive parent is NOT the same as facing a school bully or even a school authority figure, like a principal, and to imply that it is does a disservice to people who are victims of child abuse and who have to co-exist at least until they come of age. Threatening one's father with a baseball bat probably won't have the same effect as it does in the book, i.e. Domineering Dad bursting into tears and apologizing for years of cruelty. If they were capable of feeling such remorse, they probably wouldn't be abusing you that badly in the first place. Right?. Taking Tyler's route might make you feel like more of a "man," but you're likely to wind up on the streets or in the hospital. At least outside of YA lit or Hollywood. Maybe this isn't what the author intended at all, but it's what I wound up taking away from the book.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning Inisght and story, September 28, 2007

By 

Steven R. McEvoy "MCWPP" (Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Twisted (Hardcover)

Laurie Halse Anderson is the author of 5 novels and 3 picture books. Her books have been nominated for numerous awards and many recommendations. Each of her books that I have read has been excellent and this one is no exception. The dust jacket states "Everybody told me to be a man ... Nobody told me how." Anderson captures the essence of the journey from a boy to a man.

Tyler Miller had been caught defacing school property, and now he is a hero to some, and an outcast to others, and is trying to find his way in the world. He has done community service all summer at the school, and worked for a landscaping company.

Now he must return to school and face the students and teachers who know what he did and the punishment he received for it. The school year begins badly; at a party he is knocked into a tray of glasses and cuts the feet of the Alpha female of the school, who happens to be the women of his dreams, Bethany Milbury.

Tyler is forced to take Bethany a cake as an apology for the accident. They become friends, and seem to be sort of dating. Then Bethany gets trashed at a party, and Tyler does the right thing. Yet Tyler broke his curfew from the court and that is just the beginning of some serious problems in his life. Unfortunately someone takes advantage of Bethany while she is drunk and most people think it is Tyler because of his reputation.

Most people think he did it. The cops keep coming by. He is attacked in school and out of school. He struggles with what to do, how to be a man. Can he learn how to be a man; can he take control of his life that seems completely out of control?

This book does an amazing job of capturing the angst of growing up, of finding your place in the world. It shows clearly the transition from boy to man, and then end of high school and moving on to the rest of life.

Anderson, as a woman, surprised me with he ability to write about becoming a man; her insight and clarity are awesome. This book should become a classic. Much like her earlier novel Speak I believe this book should be on the reading list for every high school or university Children's Literature course.
The book leaves you wanting more. The reader will want to know what happens next. Where is Tyler in a year, 3, 5 or 10? These questions will haunt you after you finish the book.

(First Published in Imprint 2007-09-28 as 'Short Titles With Varied Depths.')Speak