TRUTH IS THE HARBINGER OF HELLWhat if every time you told the truth, evil followed?My name is Melody Fisher. My daddy was a snake handler in Appalachia until Mama died. Though years have passed, I can still hear the rattle before the strike that took her from me.And it’s all my fault.Since then, I’ve been passed around from foster home to foster home. I didn’t think anything could be as bad as … home to foster home. I didn’t think anything could be as bad as losing Mama.
I was wrong.
But I will not speak of things people have done to me. Every time I do, worse evil follows. Now, the only thing I trust is what saved me years ago.
Back when I would sing the snakes calm …
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This book exemplifies my belief that no matter what parents, educators, or children protective services do, children can still turn out OK. I applaud the author for presenting a complex account of a childs journey to young womanhood and the people who were able to show her a way.
5 Cranky Stars!
First of all, I have to say that this book should have trigger warnings for readers. The book deals with several sensitive subjects, including sexual abuse of a minor girl, rape, torment, and physical abuse.
Melody Fisher is a young woman who has suffered a lot in her sixteen years. Her father was a snake handler in Appalachia and her Mama was killed by one of his snakes. Then, her father disappeared. Thus begins Melody’s trip through a flawed foster care system. She has been shifted from home to home, each more horrific than the one before. As the book begins, Melody is spending every afternoon with psychologist Dr. Roger Kane because she hasn’t spoken a word in over two years.
As the story unfolds, the author leads the reader through Melody’s life, with flashbacks filling in the blanks of the present. Dr. Kane uses a unique approach to try to communicate with Melody by utilizing her love of music. Since Melody won’t talk, he asks her to tell him what she is feeling/thinking through music she has downloaded on a MP3 player. I found this to be a very different, intriguing and effective way for two people to communicate.
I found myself highlighting many of the lyrics that Melody used to tell her tale. At the end of the book, I learned that many of these lyrics were written specifically for this book by Lucas Astor. I hope that someday he will be able to bring those songs to life and share them with the world. The emotions that they evoked were truly heartwrenching.
Melody has suffered a lot at the hands of those who were supposed to protect her. The reader eventually learns of some of the horrors that have led to her uncommunicative state. “The pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow. For every challenge encountered, there is an opportunity for growth.”
In the end, Melody finally finds peace and friendship with several people who truly care about her. As her favorite Foster Mother Quatie Raincrow tells her, “May the stars carry your sadness away, may the flowers fill your heart with beauty, may hope forever wipe away your tears, and, above all, may silence make you strong.”
All in all, this book was well-written and I found myself feeling Melody’s emotions as she struggled with telling her story. In fact, it took me several days to process what I had read and to be able to write a review. This is the type of book that will stay with me for a long, long time.
Dark, delicate, and masterfully written, Speak No Evil will make you cringe and cry in equal measure as it pulls your heart through the muck of humanity’s worst evils in every page before depositing you at the end feeling uplifted, empowered, and—most of all—grateful.
Raised in a snake-handling church where indigenous belief systems mix with modern Christianity, Melody Fisher is a half Native American, quarter Scottish, and quarter black orphan. Before her parents’ deaths—one by accident and the other, arguably, by grief—her daddy caught and handled rattlers and other venomous serpents for the church where Melody sang with her parents. Melody’s voice is God’s gift and music is in her soul; she can even charm the snakes her father catches through her songs—a curious and seemingly divine feat considering snakes have no ears (at least not in the traditional sense). But Melody’s voice is also her greatest burden, because when she asks her mama about the strange man she saw walking with her along the river, her mama is almost immediately struck down by one of her father’s rattlers. From there, tragedy follows in the wake of Melody’s voice until, eventually, she stops speaking altogether.
After years in the system and a series of foster homes that have gone from bad to worse, Melody Fisher has lost her voice. At sixteen, she’s survived more trauma and tragedy that many people experience in a lifetime, and now she’s on trial for stabbing a classmate. But, even faced with losing her freedom, she cannot find the strength to speak after being silent for nearly two years. She can’t speak, because every time she has told the truth something terrible has happened. Now, Melody won’t even use her voice to clear her name—or tell the truth about why she stuck a pair of scissors in Troy Alexander. Even so, music still lives in Melody’s soul, and with the help of her court-ordered therapist, she learns to communicate through a massive song library on a portable music player. Through the restorative power of song, Melody eventually finds her voice and speaks the truth that has weighed heavy in her heart.
Like Melody’s voice that could calm snakes, Gardner’s storytelling displays the same sort of sinister charm as she unravels Melody’s past to tell the story of her present. Speak No Evil is at once hypnotic, vaguely sinister, and decidedly beautiful, with sharp, poignant prose that handles the heaviest of issues with grace and delicacy.
The terrible tragedies and stifling trauma that Melody has experienced are enough to make the reader want to reach through the pages and gather the poor girl up in our collective arms. And, while younger readers should certainly be forewarned of weighty topics like grief, abuse, and rape that rear their rattles in this story, all are tactfully and mindfully done, proving Gardner’s ability to convey emotion and complexity without catering to shock and surprise. Likewise, Gardner’s technical execution is flawless as she alternates between multiple timelines to piece together Melody’s story, giving just enough information to keep the story moving without bogging itself down in exposition.
In fact, you might say that, like the music that lives in Melody, Speak No Evil is itself something of a song bound within the pages of a story. With powerful lyrics, perfectly paced prose, and artful cadence, Gardner gives voice to a character that has become disconnected from her own, while reminding us all that silence does not equal consent, and that the truth, even (and perhaps especially) when it hurts, must be spoken.
Liana Gardner