Daniel Isn't Talking - Hardcover

Leimbach, Marti

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0771052022 ISBN 13: 9780771052026

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2006

Synopsis

A fearless, unsentimental novel about a mother’s devotion to her autistic child, by the bestselling author of Dying Young. Simultaneous international publication.

Smart, resilient, engaged with the world, Melanie Marsh has already weathered the suicide of her father, the death of her mother, and the loss of her lover, but she has not lost the thrill of adventure or her wry sense of humour. When she comes to England to study, Melanie meets Stephen, a financial analyst, and is drawn immediately to his strong presence. Marriage and family quickly follow, as well as a certain happiness, until Melanie’s worst suspicions are confirmed about their three-year-old son, Daniel. Daniel has autism and the prognosis is grim. Frustrated by the limits of the medical system, Melanie takes Daniel’s care into her own hands and devotes all she has to working with him. Her marriage soon begins to falter and Stephen eventually turns to a former lover. It is at about this time that she seeks out Andy O’Connor, an alternative therapist whose controversial approach to autism she’s heard something about. It is Andy’s creativity, his patience and caring, that enable her son’s progress, and for the first time, hope, in many forms, takes root.

Passionate, moving, heartbreakingly real, Marti Leimbach’s new novel reveals a mother’s desperation and the capacities of love, demonstrating once again Leimbach’s gift for storytelling and for portraying characters we come to care deeply about.

About this title

About the Author

Marti Leimbach is the author of several novels, including the international and New York Times bestseller Dying Young, which was made into a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts. Born in Washington, D.C., she currently lives outside London, England, with her husband and two children, one of whom is autistic. She teaches at Oxford University’s Creative Writing Program.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Emily has a mop of blond curls billowing around her face, smiling eyes, aquamarine. Her baby teeth, spread wide in her mouth, remind me of a ­jack-­o’-­lantern, and when she laughs it is as though there are bubbles inside her, a sea of contentment. She carries Mickey Mouse by his neck, and wears a length of cord pinned to her trousers so that she, too, has a tail. Kneeling on a chair beside the dining table, she instructs me on the various ways one can paint Dumbo’s relatives, who wear decorated blankets which require much precision. Unlike most children, who only paint on paper, Emily enjoys painting ­three-­dimensional objects and so, for this reason, we own nine gray rubber elephants, some with trunks up and some with trunks down, that she has decorated many times. She has yet to find an elephant she thinks is a suitable Dumbo, and so we just have the nine so far.

Daniel has one toy he likes and hundreds he ignores. The one toy he likes is a wooden Brio model of Thomas the Tank Engine. It has a face like a clock, framed in black, with a chimney that serves almost as a kind of hat. The train must go with him everywhere and must either be in his hand or in his mouth. Never in Emily’s hand and never washed in the sink, as I am now doing. No amount of reassurance from me, no promise that this will take only one minute, less than a minute, does anything to soothe Daniel, who pounds at my thighs with his small hands, screams like a monkey, opening his mouth so wide I can see down his throat.

“Daniel, please don’t cry.” I give him back the train but it is too late. He’s so upset now that he cannot stop. His eyes are screwed shut, his chin tucked as though trying to ward off a blow to the face. I am on my knees in front of him, putting my arms around his shoulders, but this causes him to wrench away, falling with a thud onto the carpet just as Stephen walks through the door from work.

“I could hear him from the street,” Stephen says. He’s holding his mail in one hand, his cell phone in the other. Standing at the door, his tie knotted crisply, his jacket folded over one arm, he looks as though he has entered the house from another world, one that is ordered and logical, one that is calm. He steps around Daniel and goes to the back door, waving to Emily who is making towers of blocks on our small patio. She runs to him and I hear the clap of her arms around his waist, her happy chatter as she tells him she made a tower as tall as herself. Stephen brings her over to where I am with Daniel, holding her on his hip.

“Why is Daniel crying?” Emily asks.

“Because I washed his train.” I try to smile, to make a funny face. “He’ll be okay,” I tell her.

“Daniel, shhhhh!” she says to him, but he pays no attention.

“Do you think he’s allergic to something?” Stephen asks.

“I think...” I don’t want to tell Stephen what I think. I only had that train for half a minute. It seems to me Daniel cries more and more with each passing day for all sorts of bizarre and inexplicable reasons. And I have no idea why.

“What do you think?” Stephen asks. His voice sounds sharp, but it might just be because he is trying to be heard over the noise.

“That it isn’t normal.”

Stephen puts Emily down, telling her to get her Mickey Mouse. “I want a word with that mouse,” he says ­mock-­seriously, which sends Emily into fits of giggles. Then he squats next to me on the floor, putting his arms out for Daniel, who ignores him. “It’s the terrible twos,” he says in a manner that tells me this is not a suggestion but a declaration of fact.

“He’s almost three.”

Stephen sighs. He is so used to my worries about Daniel that they must feel a burden to him now. I can tell this is the case, but I can’t make myself react any differently. He gets up and goes back to the mail, sifting through envelopes. After a moment or two he says, “Young children cry. Isn’t that what you always tell me?”

But not like this. I spend every day with young children. I see them at toddler groups. I see them at playgrounds.

None of them are like Daniel. “That’s not why,” I say.

Edition details

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0771052022
• ISBN 13: 9780771052026
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288