3.5 stars. I picked this book at random in the library and the summary on the back seemed like something I would like to read. I liked the story and the characters felt very real which made me want to finish this book as it didn't grab my attention at the beginning. The end was somewhat predictable and there were some characters and scenes that I think should have been more developed. Still, December is a quick and heartwarming read and I recommend reading it during Winter or Christmas because it's full of snow and fireplaces...

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There was much to admire in this story of an eleven year old elective mute and her parents' desperate efforts to get her to speak. Particularly telling was the parents' feeling of guilt - the sense of looking back at a series of forks in the road, and every time (seemingly) having taken the wrong one. I recognised that exact feeling from personal experience of a child with a different but related issue. The narrative moves slowly - as the title suggests it takes place within a single month - and time is given to observing activities in forensic detail, including a dental check-up which appears to take place in real time.

The sections from Isabelle's point of view were interesting - the reasons why someone might want to speak and yet be unable to do so were convincing, for me at least. I did wonder, given that she is capable of writing essays for school, and icing a cake with the word "sorry" why the family didn't just communicate through written notes. But maybe that bit was covered and I just missed it. ( )

Review: December by Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop.

The problem I have with this book is it was boring. The subject matter was sad, a child stops talking for nine months, but it still didn’t move my emotions. It was a fast pace story but with no images of what was really the reason this child stopped talking, besides because she just didn’t want to talk. It was like she was playing a game and a selfish one at that. Her parents seem to enable her by making excuses for her behavior. As a mother, who raised three grown children, I became frustrated that the parents continued to let this go on so long.

Isabelle is extremely smart, but if she has this much control at her young age, I can’t imagine what she will become as a teenager. I did get one vision and that is a spiteful look in the eyes of the child.

I know the story is fiction but I have to put my two cents worth of what I read. The story was lacking reasons why she stopped talking and why she began to talk months later. I found the novel to be commonly written with questions unanswered and the characters uninteresting….
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Chosen for its title alone – DECEMBER is Winthrop’s second novel but the first I have read. Set in the week leading up to Christmas DECEMBER is not an edge of the seat read; it is not in your face dramatic either; what it IS is a sensitive observation of how each of the three main characters deals with Isabella’s self imposed silence. It is also not so much a look at why she has chosen to be silent, although that is hinted at, it is more about that she IS silent and she has imposed the silence on herself and doesn’t know how to break it. The story also focuses on the frustrations of the parents – the desire to hear her speak, the blame games, the guilt trips and the fact that they realise that they may be actually enabling Isabella to continue. A trigger is needed, but neither mum and dad nor Isabella can figure out what that trigger might be. My only complaint is that the ending, when it came, was rushed, as if the author was enjoying her time in the heads of the family and remembered oops there had better be some sort of resolution.

This is an intricately detailed novel covering only a few days in real time and,in a way, it's actually kind of too realistic. Promising plot points appear -- the deaf boy next door, Isabelle's latest doctor, her sketchbooks -- that lead nowhere, which happens often enough in real life but is frustrating in fiction where every word is supposed to mean something. I kept wondering what made Isabelle stop speaking, and the story was like a mystery to me in that sense...but the reader never really finds out.

It's unclear just when the story is set, which may be frustrating to some readers, but the absence of cell phones and computers and the mention of an answering machine as if it's a newfangled device makes me think early- to mid-nineties, which would make Isabelle about the same age as the author.

I was a bit troubled by what seemed to be the ultimate message of the book, that a family's love can "cure" a troubled child, because that isn't always true. Although Isabelle goes through five psychiatrists without a diagnosis, to me it looked pretty clear: selective mutism and severe depression. Neither of which tend to go away on their own, no matter how much your parents love you. I might have bought it if the book had covered a longer time frame; as it was, the ending felt hurried.

On the other hand, each character was very carefully rendered, particularly Isabelle and her parents, and the painful, complicated but loving relationships within the family were very well done. And the suspense -- will Isabelle ever start talking again? -- moved the story right along. I sat down in the library and read it all right there, something I rarely do.

This book is a mixed bag, is what I'm sayin'. ( )