For the past five years, Hayley Kincaid and her father, Andy, have been on the road, never staying long in one place as he struggles to escape the demons that have tortured him since his return from Iraq. Now they are back in the town where he grew up so Hayley can attend school. Perhaps, for the first time, Hayley can have a normal life, put aside her own painful memories, even have a relationship with Finn, the hot guy who obviously likes her but is hiding secrets of his own.
Will being back home help Andy’s PTSD, or will his terrible memories drag him to the edge of hell, and drugs push him over? The Impossible Knife of Memory is Laurie Halse Anderson at her finest: compelling, surprising, and impossible to put down.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Impossible To Put Down
By Tamela Mccann
Laurie Halse Anderson's The Impossible Knife of Memory has all the hallmarks of a young adult novel: boy/girl relationship, troubled parent, good friend with her own issues. If you left it at that, it would be the same old story that fills so many YA novels. Thankfully, Anderson's writing and her sense of character make this book a cut above the rest.Hayley's job is to make sure her father stays sane and doesn't hurt himself. Or at least, that's the job she's been saddled with and she doesn't know any other way of life. Her father is a veteran suffering from PTSD; as a result, when he isn't drinking or doing drugs, he's running away to try to dull the pain. This year, her eighteenth, he's taken her home to her grandmother's house and enrolled her in school (something she hasn't been attending since riding shotgun with him while he was a truck driver). Suddenly Hayley has the school officials looking at her, expecting her to do and be things she's not used to, and her father's condition is a minefield of issues. At least Hayley has a friend in Gracie and a boyfriend named Finn; there are people out there who care what happens to her. But holding it all together may end up being too much for all of them.Hayley's situation had me so angry I couldn't see straight; sadly enough, there are plenty of kids out there who must be the parent to their own parent, and her problems just keep multiplying. I watched as events spiraled out of control and became completely absorbed in Hayley's desperation as she tried to make everything work out while keeping her walls up. Anderson makes the story work without becoming too overwhelming or too neat; it would be interesting to see what happens as Hayley's life progresses. This glimpse into what a child of a PTSD vet may endure is illuminating and riveting, and Anderson remains one of the best young adult writers around.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
3.5 stars; Great, but the romance really hurts it
By Ashleigh
See more of my reviews on The YA Kitten! My copy was an ARC I received from the publisher via NetGalley.If there's anything Laurie Halse Anderson can do, it's write a story where she shakes up our perception of a topic so common we just about glance over it. With date rape in Speak and eating disorders in Wintergirls, she really nailed the all-too-common topics in a way few authors can even begin to approach. With The Impossible Knife of Memory, she works to pull it off again with PTSD as the topic this time. Does it work? Well...When it comes to Hayley and the really sad life she lives with her Iraq/Afghanistan war vet father Andy, Anderson nails it and nails it HARD. Wow. The dynamic between them is very screwed up because of his PTSD and the effect it has had on Hayley's life, but they love each other dearly and you can feel it. Their ups and downs --especially his--are vivid and it makes you want to sweep them both up in your arms in hopes of making things better for them.Hayley has a well-developed character/personality, but she has a tendency to be a repugnant person. Calling everyone zombies, calling girls "baby-zombie-bitches," heckling them in her head because they dared enjoy heels,... She doesn't seem to like other girls much. Only the zombie habit sees change and while calling other girls such things, she's making feminist points about how stupid it is to blame a woman's menstrual cycle whenever she dares show emotion. It's a little jarring.What really tries to kill this novel is the unnecessary romance with a creep. Speak and Wintergirls both worked better without romances because it put the spotlight on their main characters and their issues. Here, the romance takes up a lot of the book. It doesn't feel like it because it's even mixed with Hayley's life at home with her father, but when you look back on it, you see there is a lot of romance.The boy in question, Finn? He was okay, but once he tricked Hayley into going on a date with him (he told Hayley to go cover a football game because he had a date and then showed up telling her she was his date), I started calling him John Green because that is actually something the author did to get a girl to go on a date with him. Creepy and manipulative, in my opinion. That really tainted the romance for me and he was nowhere near developed enough to make me feel even a little bit fond of him. He's rather flat. Adorable at times, but still flat.They also have a very weird school system that required an unusual amount of suspension of disbelief for a contemporary YA novel. So they have such oddly specific classes as Chinese and forensic science as part of the curriculum but have to fire the gym teachers and get rid of a lot of extracurriculars because the district is so cash-strapped? My college has a Chinese class and the teacher/handful of students have to fight each and every semester to keep it. I also find it hard to believe Hayley's homeschooling on the road from 7th to 11th grade with her father was so good that she tested into 12th grade and only struggled with math. Her father doesn't come off as the best teacher and she doesn't come off as quite that intelligent.This book is pretty sizable at 400 pages and the unnecessary romance makes it a lot longer than it probably needs to be, but it's a wonderful read nonetheless and handles PTSD in a deft way as some of Hayley's father's flashbacks are weaved into the narrative. Fans of Anderson's other novels are sure to love this one just as much--and from the looks of it, I'm merely being the black sheep again. Everyone else seems to be loving it! Go for it. There's not a whole lot to regret about it.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.Unforgettable, eloquent, and intense
By The Compulsive Reader
Hayley and her father have lived on the run for the past six years to avoid dealing with her father’s PTSD. After an extremely bad incident, they return to their hometown so that Hayley can attend her senior year. Hayley is doing her best to keep her father’s unstable condition a secret, but as she gets closer to new guy Finn and her father sinks deeper into depression, memories of her childhood resurface and she starts to lose control of her life.Hayley’s voice is strong, sarcastic, and leaves an impression on the reader on the first page. Her anger and fear are apparent through her disdain of her fellow classmates and her reluctance to be courted by new guy Finn, but as the story moves along, Anderson builds her character and reveals glimpses of a childhood full of disappointment and few happy moments with her father. Hayley remains closed off and distant to human connection throughout most of the novel, struggling to hold her life together and protect her father. It isn’t until she has the courage and the need to open up to those she loves—and resents—that she is able save her father, and create a future for herself. Anderson’s writing, as always, is precise and eloquent, unforgettable in its honesty and intense in its exploration of emotion and memory.
