Mouthing the Words FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Thelma is not yet six years old at the outset of this tale, and already the world shows no promise of accomodating itself to her desires. Still, Thelma tries - by asking practically every adult she meets to adopt her. Not that she has been orphaned. But her parents fall dysfunctionally short of anybody's ideal. Her father's games - he plays boss, with Thelma as his naughty secretary - are at best unsettling, and her mother so fiercely favors her younger brother, the cherubic Willy, that Thelma finds herself perpetually in emotional exile." "By turns harrowing and hilarious, Thelma's story follows her bumpy progress from the rural English village of Little Slaughter to Canada to a law degree at Oxford. Along the way she encounters many potential parents and even makes some friends, but it is with the companions of her fertile imagination - with the scaredy-baby Janawee, moody and timid Ginniger, and big, strong, stoic Heroin - that Thelma escapes, and at the same time complicates, her life's crueler realities. The shadows they cast cannot dull Thelma's humor or spirit, however. Nor do they diminish the deft wit and breathtaking powers of observation that distinguish this debut of a new literary talent."--BOOK JACKET.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
A crystal-voiced young narrator and the saving grace of humor distinguish Gibb's stunningly assured debut novel (already winner of the Toronto Book Award) from similarly conceived stories about dysfunctional families. Thelma is but five years old when her story begins in the small English village of Little Slaughter. Her mother, a model who resented her pregnancy with Thelma, has a lover who she says is just pretend. Her father holds Thelma over a bridge by her armpits and has her play secretary to his boss, a game that involves French kissing and, later on, worse. It's little wonder, then, that Thelma invents three imaginary friends Ginniger, Janawee and Heroin each with her own function for helping Thelma to cope. When the family moves to Canada, things worsen, and Thelma commences poignantly asking other adults to be her parents. In spite of her horrific childhood, Thelma attends law school and wins a scholarship to Oxford. But psychological fallout from her past including bouts of anorexia and self-mutilation stand in the way of her progress until at last she reclaims the life she should have had all along, finding her own voice. Gibb intimately understands the child's need to reinvent the personal world as normal, however topsy-turvy the reality. The novel has already been compared to Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted, but it more closely resembles the film Shine. Thelma is a compelling heroine, her tale too well-told and too wide-ranging, both in content and affect, to be pigeonholed as "just another coming-of-age story." Foreign rights sold in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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