December, Elizabeth H. Winthrop

Elizabeth J. Winthrop’s December is a thought provoking novel about an eleven year-old girl who has stopped speaking. We enter Isabelle’s world in December, in New England, as her parents, Wilson and Ruth, search desperately for a solution.

Isabelle’s school has allowed this artistic and musical adolescent to complete her assignments at home but can not accept this situation any longer. Ruth has given up her legal practice to cope with Isabelle but she is reaching the end of her patience.

We hear the story through the discussions of the parents, through their thoughts and the mind of Isabelle. We witness frequent family occasions in the kitchen and in restaurants where Isabelle is fed mouth-watering American childhood delights. With Ruth and Isabelle, we meet the helpless and tactless psychologist, the headmistress and the art teacher in the parent/child art class. The story is set against a wintery New England and New York landscape.

Like the three main characters, we are trying to pick up clues to explain Isabelle’s enforced silence – family stresses, a dying pet, the death of a squirrel. Even Isabelle is trapped in her own silence. We become as anxious as the characters to find a solution.

This is such an unusual novel. It is refreshingly different, revealing no villains but simply a normal family in the throes of a crisis. It is well worth reading.

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