The Language of Secrets [Hardcover]

Dianne Dixon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 23, 2010

From a fresh and exciting new voice in women's fiction, The Language of Secrets unflinchingly examines the lifelong repercussions of a father's betrayal.

Justin Fisher has a successful career as the manager of a luxury hotel, a lovely wife, and a charming young son. While all signs point to a bright future, Justin can no longer ignore the hole in his life left by his estranged family. When he finally gathers the courage to reconnect with his troubled past, Justin is devastated to learn that his parents have passed away. And a visit to the cemetery brings the greatest shock of all—next to the graves of his father and mother sits a smaller tombstone for a three-year-old boy: a boy named Thomas Justin Fisher.

What follows is an extraordinary journey as Justin struggles with issues of his own identity and pieces together the complex and heartbreaking truth about his family. With great skill and care, Dianne Dixon explores the toll that misunderstandings, blame, and resentment can take on a family. But it is the intimate details of family life—a mother's lullaby for her son, a father's tragic error in judgment—that make this novel so exceptional and an absolute must for reading groups everywhere.

The Language of Secrets is the story of an unspeakable loss born of human frailty and an ultimate redemption born of human courage.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Dianne Dixon on The Language of Secrets

When I began work on The Language of Secrets, I assumed that making the switch from television writer to novelist would be pretty simple. After all, screenplays and novels share basic building blocks: interesting plot, believable characters, and a story reflecting some aspect of our common human experience. But to my surprise, I found that crafting a novel was something very different from crafting a screenplay. A screenplay is a blueprint. It achieves full form only after hundreds of people have brought their creativity and vision to the process. For example, the beginning of a scene in a screenplay might be:

INT. HOTEL LOBBY--DAY

Posh. Upscale. Caroline enters. She’s nervous.

Here’s the opening of that same scene in a novel:

The air in the hotel lobby was cold and smelled of rose-scented perfume. Somewhere, a harp was being played. Everywhere, there were well-dressed men and beautiful women and extravagant arrangements of expensive flowers. Being in this opulent, sybaritic place was stirring excitement, and guilt, in Caroline.

In a screenplay, scenes are brought to life by set designers, lighting technicians, actors, musicians, costumers, and cinematographers. In a novel, the scenes must come to life--fully drawn for the reader--through the imagery provided by only one person: the novelist.

When I first realized I was out there alone--trying to create an entire world out of nothing but paper and ink--I was rattled. But making the transition from screenplay to novel became an unforgettable experience that gave me a new appreciation for both forms of writing.

I loved doing screenplays, and now I’m also in love with the process of structuring a novel. In The Language of Secrets I discovered fresh, exciting ways to assemble the building blocks of storytelling. And for a writer, that is pure joy. --Dianne Dixon

(Photo © Bill Youngblood)

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From Publishers Weekly

A story of mystery, betrayal, and family tragedy, Dixon's debut novel, despite its creative story line, falls short in execution. After living in London for a decade, 33-year-old Justin Fisher returns to Southern California with his wife and young son to reconnect with the family he hasn't spoken to in years. The rub: he can't remember much of his childhood, or even why he's kept himself at such a distance. Soon after arriving, he learns his parents are dead, and upon visiting their graves, he discovers a tombstone with his name on it indicating he died at age four. As Justin searches his foggy memories for the truth about his past, the narrative skips back in time to fill in the holes with the tale of Justin's mother and how her relationship with three men in college dictates her future. Though there's a payoff in the surprise ending, the plot is painfully overeventful—Justin's mother's story often reads like outtakes from a soap opera—and Dixon's prose struggles to carry the narrative . (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (March 23, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385530633
• ISBN-13: 978-0385530637
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #953,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Plot; Poor Writing, May 7, 2010

By 

A reader "fort smith reader" (Fort Smith, AR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Language of Secrets (Hardcover)

I wanted to like this book but it was a big letdown. The writing was very poor, the dialogue was strained, and even though I wanted to read through to the end, it was an effort to do so. The plot had a lot of promise although some of the specific events are implausible given the time period that the story is set. The shotgun wedding, the divorced woman not being able to get a credit card, the conversational style would all work better had the story been set back a couple of decades. The family members are dysfunctional as individuals and as a group yet the characters are very shallowly written with very little backstory telling us what may have shaped the dysfunction. If the author wanted to produce a quality book in so few pages, some characters and sideplots should have been eliminated or the book should have been longer with more completely drawn characters. I read several books a week and while many are entertaining, they don't all hit the 4 or 5 star level, however I seldom rate anything that I bother to finish any lower than 3 stars, so at 2 stars I found this an exceptional dissappointment. I am very glad that I got this book from my library.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Real Page Turner, March 24, 2010

By 

London Bookworm "London Bookworm" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Language of Secrets (Hardcover)

Once the hero makes his shocking discovery at the start of the book you just have to keep turning those pages to find out WHY. Well and tautly written, this rattles along. The perfect book to take with you on holiday, when you just want to escape from it all and spend time in another, more exciting world. I understand this is Ms Dixon's first novel. If she writes more like this I will be buying them all.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Original plot with shallow characters, May 17, 2010

By 

Amy Henry (Nipomo, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Language of Secrets (Hardcover)

The Language of Secrets is a tightly wound mystery, with a plot unlike any other I've ever run across. The entire story is unusual and grabs you immediately. The main character had moved to London to pursue a career, and remained out of touch with his immediate family. After many, many years, he returns to California and tries to reconnect. He finds his parents have died, and when he visits their graves, he sees another headstone next to them. His. Showing that he died at age four. Immediately he's bounced into a living hell of flashbacks, waking delusions, and disquietude that infects his own marriage. He has no idea who he is and what has happened.



Thus begins this twisted and complex tale that takes you through the lives of several members of his family. It is suspenseful and anxious...so much so that I felt nauseated at times. Perhaps it was the suspense of the missing four year, nearly the same age as my own child, which made me anxious. All I can say is that this story fascinated me by just how off-the-wall it was. I read a lot, and running into an utterly unique premise is unusual.

That said, it's apparent that this is a plot driven story rather than built on solid characters. I felt a bit cheated that some of these amazing situations came from some rather superficial characters who seemed predictable despite the unpredictable plot. Some were so shallow that I could actually foresee their actions, and others exemplified tremendous character values yet no rationale for their behavior was given. It was the characters that detracted me from the story.

The story proceeds at a quick pace, and the only other "blip" that occurred was when one character's almost unimaginable actions were explained, in an `aside' by the author, where she attempts to justify the actions in light of the socio-political values of the time period. It was only two paragraphs, but it didn't fit. She should have been able to show those details without such an invasive explanation. It felt a bit preachy, actually, and it derailed the pace. And while she tried to account for the actions, it wasn't sufficient to overcome the initial doubt about the behavior, and effectively made her argument less powerful.

This is a intriguing book, and one that I will share with friends. The minor flaws it has doesn't take away from this tremendous story and fascinating plot.