Hero, 12 is selectively mute (selectively mute as distinguished from electively mute in that the person speaks in specific instances to certain persons). She was named for a character in Shakespeare's "As You Like It." Her siblings have the odd names of Athol, 23 Ginevra, 21 and younger sister Sapphira comprise the family along with their conventionally named author parents Mike and Annie. Annie is a lover of words and Ginevra follows in her footsteps by writing a book about how intelligence is stimulated by vocabulary enrichment. Sapphira gets on everybody's nerves with her use of arcane words such as "collieshangle," "cogger" and others.

Ginevra returns home with boyfriend and baby on the way; Hero is hired to work in her neighbor's garden and do light housekeeping. Plenty of weird things take place in this book and the girl in the attic was just too implausible to be taken seriously, even on a literary level. The ending is just as bizarre as the rest of the book. Forget this book. There are better books about elective (choosing not to speak) mutism and selective (speaking only under specific conditions) mutism.


A hopelessly boring book   June 2, 2004
 2 out of 3 found this review helpful

The idea behind this story seemed to me full of potential: a girl born to a "word family", with her Mom and siblings all very talkative and smart, finds her special gift in silence. She loves to think of herself as a wild child, and in what she regards as her "true life" she feels almost like a bird, climbing trees, dreaming she could fly... until one day she accepts to work part-time for a very peculiar person, and finally lives her own fairy tale, discovering the secret hidden beyond the forest she loves so much. Unfortunately the style is dull, the rhythm really slow, the introspection of characters superficial. There are a lot of details which are not necessary to the story, and make it too heavy. The really interesting part starts about in the middle and is over in a dozen pages or maybe less. It's a pity, it could have been a fascinating book, but as it is, it's really not worth the effort to begin reading it.


I love this book!!   April 6, 2003
 0 out of 1 found this review helpful

This is my favourite book, you can really relate to the feelings of the main character, Hero, and while it can be really serious and a bit scary, it can also be really hilarious. I think its got a bit for everyone's favourite things in a book!


A brilliant book that you can't put down   May 13, 2000
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

This book is about Hero a girl who can talk but never says a word. She climbs the trees outside Miss Credences garden and becomes a different person in her fantasy world. Then she starts to work for Miss Credence and discovers a dark secret. This book is brilliant and can be quite scary. I urge you to read it!