A typical New York family must learn to cope when their ten-year-old daughter Isabelle stops speaking for nine months, forcing them all to confront Isabelle's overwhelming anger and love, and help her find her voice again. Reprint.
Isabelle Carter is a precocious 11-year-old, one who learns Beethoven and researches Stalin of her own accord. But her parents, Ruth and Wilson, are desperately disturbed by her one lamentable tendency: she has stopped speaking entirely. With the prospect of her expulsion from a ritzy private school looming, Isabelle is subjected to a barrage of psychoanalytic sessions and scientific diagnoses. Through detailed descriptions and ticking-time-bomb pacing, Winthrop's omniscient narration explores the Carter family's heights and pitfalls with touching clarity. The gifted, troubled Isabelle represents an amplified case of awkward adolescence, but the novel's specificity and insight make this a rewarding family drama.
- Genre: Fiction + Literature Genres
- Subgenre: General, Literary
- Publisher: Vintage Books
- Pages: 305
- Edition: Reprint
- Language: English
- Format: paperback
- Release Date: July 14, 2009
- Date Published: July 14, 2009
- Author: Elizabeth Winthrop