Customer Reviews

December

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

What happens to a family when their only child decides to stop talking? As the fifth psychiatrist to which her parents bring 11-year old Isabelle says, there is nothing clinically wrong. Yet, he explains, her silence "is not because she does not want to speak." This second, and beautifully written, novel by Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop sensitively examines how all of the family members struggle to cope with the silence that Isabelle has imposed upon herself as she, and they, struggle to bring her out of it. I found myself pulled into the family, rooting for each of the imperfect people in it to find a way to work through the situation.

This very realistic novel, December, by Winthrop is a mirror into the lives of a family facing a crisis of silence. The characters are very human and very true to life. The father tries to cope by losing himself to tasks,by keeping busy. The mother looks for ways to break through the walls of silence with psychiatrists and art. The child , so sensitive and intelligent, is coping with her stresses in a tomb of silence.
The book portrays the achingly real conflict of a child, who appears to be spoiled and willful, but who is actually a gentle soul caught up in a nature so fragile and sensitive that it requires the isolation of silence to cope. Any family going through parenting problems of any kind will relate to the love, sadness and frustration that December so realistically portrays.

A new Kindle and a long, summer vacation allowed me to read quite a few books. December was one of the best! Ms. Winthrop is a masterful storyteller! With insight and expertise, she takes readers inside the heads of each of the three main characters, a mother, a father, and a young daughter, who has stopped talking. We get to know them intimately through their thoughts or words. Personally, by the end of the book the characters were like friends, and I cared deeply about how the story resolved!

I enjoyed this book for many reasons! It is well written and she takes you down many paths, that much like life, work or don't. I felt as if I were spying on these people!

However I was impressed with her story of the girls silence. My daughter has Selective Mutism and is frequently placed in situations where she wants to talk but can not. I felt like this author completely understood my daughter, in ways even I do not, and captured the paraylsis of it! The story is not about why is silent - the story is about that she IS silent - brilliant! And her ability to capture the parents frustration over this condition yet immense desire to solve it - it is literally like stepping into someone's shoes and experincing their life with this problem. I am flummoxed how she could understand this condition so well. Bravo! A beautiful story that captures a perplexing tussle with life!

December is amusing and beautifully written. Winthrop has a great ability to describe anything and everything. KRG

What a strange book, Isabelle wouldn't talk and then, finally, she would. Or maybe couldn't then could, or didn't then did. What am I missing? did I miss the reason? She had loving parents, no apparent trauma. I can only think that I missed something somehow...

I agree with the other U.S. reviewers who felt this story lacked insight. Although well written, it lagged in places. Isabelle, 11 has stopped speaking in early 2006. She has become an elective mute. (The story is identified as being set in the early 2000's. References to historical events also pinpoint the story's time frame. Since Christmas falls on a Monday in the story, it was easy to figure out that the story was set in 2006 and not 2000).

Desperate, Isabelle's potty-mouthed parents, Ruth and Wilson consult with 5 different psychiatrists and nobody has made any inroads into Isabelle's elective mutism. Nothing draws her out. Even a mother-daughter art class (mothers on one side, daughters on the other side of a glass partition in a museum) fails to engage the girl.

Another reviewer made a good point about Ruth and Wilson acting as enablers. Isabelle's behavior, which Ruth chronicles early in the book sounds like she may be on the autism spectrum. At 2, Isabelle mutely watched her peers at play; at 4 she refused to let Ruth leave her alone in preschool until April of that year and by 5, she had a meltdown when a teacher made a joking comment which was taken literally.

I found Isabelle an unappealling character and plain didn't like her. In fact, I disliked most of the characters in this book, save for a kind doorman named Brian, Isabelle's latest psychiatrist, Ruth's eccentric brother Jimmy and Wilson's mother in New England.

I didn't like the ending and the f-bombs got old fast. I also disliked the way Isabelle ended her siege of silence. Read "The Weight of Silence" The Weight of Silence (Superior Collection) instead. That is a much better book about a girl who is electively mute.

A well written novel without insight. Isabelle has stopped speaking. Her parents have sent her to five psychiatrists. They have no insight into themselves or into her. One begins to feel by page 150 of this rather short (235 pages) book that the author doesn't have any insight either; by the end of the book, this theory is unfortunately confirmed. If you want a well-written psychological mystery with no resolution at all -- and I can't think of anyone who does -- this is the book for you.

I agree that this book is initially very engaging...BUT, I was terribly disappointed in the ending! What a letdown; it ruined the rest of the book for me! I won't be reading any more of this author's books.

It sounded interesting and then I kept waiting for something to happen to justify this young girls silence....I then started skipping pages...then chapters and finally I just stopped reading...I simply did not have the patience for this nonsense.What a waste !