December | December | Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop

And My words Like Silent Raindrops Fell and Echoed in the Sounds of Silence | December | Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop

books:


	• December Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop Knopf, 2008 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Beautifully written

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.

for more information click here

December

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

And My words Like Silent Raindrops Fell and Echoed in the Sounds of Silence

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.

for more information click here

Wow!

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!

A spellbinding novel about a troubled young girl and a family in crisis, and a gripping, astonishing portrait of recovery and self-determination.

When December opens, eleven year old Isabelle hasn?t spoken a word in nearly a year. Four psychiatrists have abandoned her, declaring her silence to be impenetrable. Her parents are at once mystified and terrified by their daughter?s withdrawal, and by their own gradually loosening hold on the world as they?ve always known it. Isabelle?s private school, which has until now taken the extraordinary step of allowing her to complete her assignments from home, is on the verge of expelling her, forcing her parents to confront the possibility that what once seemed a quirk of adolescence, a phase, is perhaps a lifelong transformation, a swift and total retreat from which their daughter may never emerge. December paints an unforgettable picture of a family reckoning with a bewildering crisis, and of a critical month in the life of a bright, fascinating girl, locked into an isolation of her own making and from which only she can decide to break free.

Compulsively readable and deeply affecting, December is a work of marvelous originality and emotional power from a prodigiously gifted young writer.

for more information click here