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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36198 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review

We trust that what we know to be normal is normal simply because it is known to us. Worlds meet in collision and the coherence of our histories crumble. I feel it in the blank looks I tend to receive at dinner parties. When other people recount stories, I habitually interject with statements like, "Oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I used to feel just like that when my father held me over the bridge by the armpits."

So begins Camilla Gibb's debut novel Mouthing the Words, the compelling account of one young woman's years of abuse. When Thelma emigrates with her English family to Canada as a child, she packs away a large assortment of imaginary friends: there is Heroin, who is "the biggest, the bravest, the most grown-up"; Janawee, who cried an "awful lot because she was scared of almost everything" and Ginniger, who "sometimes played mother, sometimes Heroin's baby girl and sometimes Daddy's naughty secretary". Thelma's fertile imagination is blamed for a lot of things, particularly her rather elaborate stories about Daddy. Granted access to Thelma's inner world, the reader cannot turn a blind eye and is consequently spared nothing. This is not easy reading but Gibb's simple, lucid prose conveys the horror of the situation without ever reducing it to the voyeuristic. In her mind's eye, Thelma can turn into a stick insect, pinned to the ceiling, "safe there and rigid and tight and looking down on the immense world below" and an icicle "hard as ice, and as shiny and beautiful and clear as pure water" while her father stays down below with the other Thelma.

Gibb's exquisite prose translates a harrowing world of child abuse, mental illness and institutionalism into the most startling, powerful imagery with such simplicity and directness that she leaves you in awe. The episodes in which this spirited, puritanical child clashes with the grown-up world are sometimes hilarious, always poignant, with occasionally heartbreaking results: "I am eighteen and I am still not adopted. How many people have I asked? Mr Foster my biology teacher took that as an invitation to stick his tongue in my mouth--and after that, well, that was only recently, but I've decided to give up". Camilla Gibb's debut novel Mouthing the Words is not only a testament to her ability as a writer but testimony of a voice that all too often goes unheard. --Nicola Perry

The Sunday Times
‘Fresh and original’

The Times
'Beautiful and compelling…an insightful and humane exploration of the space between reason and imagination.’

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Customer Reviews

How can this not be a real story?
I felt that the book was absolutely amazing. The style is both enthralling and sophisticated. The harrowing tale of a child ruined by the mis-interpretation of the word 'nuture' is coupled with the sparky and often amusing realism of the characters - especially Thelma. It's on the same par as Girl Interrupted and Prozac Nation, but in my opinion better :) Thumbs up to Camilla Gibb!

A twisted, brilliant version of Alice and her looking glass
Simply, 'Mouthing The Words' resonates. I would wager that even for those readers who hadn't shared similar experiences as the protagonist, Thelma, Gibb's writing is such that Thelma's journey is accessible and understandable - even through the madness.

The focus is removed from the events of the abuse itself, and instead the reader watches Thelma develope her own defence mechanisms - imaginary friends/split personalities, numbness and dissociation to name a few (all psychologically normative responses to severe trauma). Watching the development of these defences as they emerge through her childhood is fascinating, disturbing and extremely poignant.

In Thelma's early adulthood these mechanisms collapse into a harrowing period of full-fledged mental illness and Gibb's skill really comes through. People who suffer from such illnesses find it hard to recognise themselves as ill, and, true to this, Thelma moves gracefully through a sanely-crazy reality. One gets the feeling that she is thinking clearer than ever before throughout this time. In my opinion that is a hard perspective to write from, and Gibb has mastered it.

Unlike too many novels that deal with tragedy or trauma through melancholic pathos, 'Mouthing The Words' is written with a literary integrity that entitles Thelma to transcend a one-sided, crippled object of pity. Instead she is alternately funny, naive, cold, loving and always utterly screwed.

As the title suggests much of the imagery centres around Thelma and silence - external and internal silences, frustrated communication, mouths as sexual weapons, words as tools. This imagery forms the skeleton of the text and in my opinion subtly pulls the novel together.

Whether Thelma's experiences engender either sympathy or empathy I can't recommend this novel enough.

one of the most disturbed and disturbing books ever
Without a doubt Camilla Gibb has excelled in entering the mind of a disturbed child as she moves into adulthood. The way in which she tackles the often inflammatory subjects of sexual abuse and eating disorders is quite extraordinary. This book is not an easy read - it takes time and commitment to stay with the often distressing content but...it is worth it !