From the look of this book, I was expecting casual young adult fiction, but it was neither a casual story nor YA lit. Relatively short, at only 238 pages, the novel was intense, serious with subtle touches of humor, and beautifully written. Gibb covers some intense subject matter, such as the sexual abuse and mental illness of the protagonist, and handles it adeptly — the protagonist’s emotional state is convincingly bleak, but without turning the novel into a suffocating wasteland.Some quotes:“I was born into a crowded room at St. Mary Abbot’s hospital, South Kensington, in 1968. Born in London into a month of nights and days only distinguishable form one another by degrees of grey. Born into a nation that regarded the delivery of new life as embarrassing and unseemly, that operated a National Health Service which viewed birth as a pathology necessitating a ten-day internment.“In Grade One, when I was given a fresh clean notebook in which to write something called ‘My Autobiography,’ I wrote according to the certainty of the collective narrative: ‘I was born purple and dead. I was born in England,’ as if to imply that birthplace determined birth state. In fact, as my mother describes, it it may well have. I did not burst forth into being, I was pumped into existence by a machine. Although I was the result of premature ejaculation, I was not overly excited about being released into the world.” (pp. 10–11)“Perhaps I’d missed the point or spoiled her one attempt at female bonding, but she rummaged around in the bathroom closet and thrust a box of tampons at me.“‘Thanks, Mum,’ I said. ‘But I won’t be needing these.’ She does not realize that I have just decided never to have a period. No thank you very much, I am just not interested in going that route. You can take these straight back to wherever they came from.” (p. 86)“ ‘You should do something with your hair,’ Binbecka has started to say to me. ‘It’s not becoming. Do something like mine. And clean your nails. What’s wrong with you, Thelma? Don’t you want boys to like you?’ she asks me.“No. I don’t want to paint my lips in Silver City Pink, pull up my kilt and fold it over at the waist, or press my face to the wire fence and giggle through to the other side. I don’t understand this new language where I am supposed to say mean things about my friends like, ‘Oh my gawd, she’s like, such a bitch,’ and then spend three hours that night on the phone with her talking about boys. I don’t understand.” (p. 87)“That was it for me. Since I couldn’t be adopted myself; since I couldn’t seem to embrace a religion or a lover because that would involve ghastly deeds for which I was quite unprepared; since I couldn’t adopt a child, or a cause, or a nation, I became a lawyer, or rather, I adopted the idea of the profession. It would take me many many more years to actually become a lawyer. I still had all my madness to get through, after all, but at least the declaration was the start of something. While everybody around me was so preoccupied with their bodies—their breasts, their exotic dancing, their ‘bonking’—I would devote myself to logical arguments and Faustian bargains. Of course it didn’t occur to me that as an anorexic I was probably the one most preoccupied with my body. I thought that I had transcended my body by refusing to yield to its basal demands. I wasn’t really going to make much of a lawyer until I could come to terms with the fact that I inhabited both a mind and a body. At least if I focused my mind I’d inhabit something.” (p. 113)“ ‘I do have a date, as a matter of fact,’ I say. Just not the kind of date she imagines, where a guy picks me up in his car and I wear a miniskirt and heels and I listen to him talk about himself all night and then he pulls out his Visa and then his penis shortly thereafter and I feel like I can’t protest the latter because I haven’t protested the former.” (p. 201)“We are moving in each other’s shadows, taking delicate steps at fifty-degree angles, peering out occasionally to catch the sun in each other’s hair. It involves talking into the early hours of the morning on benches outside pubs after closing. Holding hands and speaking softly and sharing little details hitherto housed in a bulging file of secrets. It is lovely and I am becoming braver. I think this man is my boyfriend. I think I am in something called a relationship. It is hard for me to know if I am, because I do not know what it must be, but perhaps there are just not enough words in English to describe this kind of arrangement. Arrangement. As if it has order, a structure somehow.” (p. 147–8)
This book was excellent. It was original, intriguing and interesting, dealing with several difficult subjects without becoming too 'heavy' or feeling too tragic. This book isn't your average 'tragic life story' - it's more. It's easy to get lost inside Thelma's rather complex mind, explore her mental state and the thoughts that this brings her. It's not boring and although you may look back and think some of the things in the book are almost unbelievable, it feels completely realistic. The protagonist sounded like Sylvia Plath and Austen Burroughs combined. Hard hitting and real but with the hint of dark humour. The book managed to hold thought, emotion and humour despite all of the subjects in the book that included homosexuality, suicide, abuse and mental illness. Interestingly and well written with a few quotes/messages that I loved. A book that I'd definitely recommend.
What do You think about Mouthing The Words (2002)?
Thelma's story hurt me. Physically. I had a sharp pain in my midsection when I read about her torture at the hands of her father. He was a monster. But her mother was the Karla Homolka of the story, without being formally acknowledged as such.It is no wonder that Thelma went off the rails. Convincingly, unsurprisingly, and luckily for me, as a reader, she also survived and rediscovered life, from a new perspective. The help, both professional and personal, she had recovering lightened the dark horror and made me glad I had persevered past the pain. Thelma didn't slip off into the sunset happily ever after, but she did manage to put one foot in front of the other and give life another try.Still, I wanted to stomp on a crack and trample a line again and again and again with increasing vehemence.
—Ann
Kind of a fantastic exploration of a young woman's mental state, while growing up through early adulthood, as a result of her father's sexual abuse. On the one hand, she's quite self-aware, but at the same time she has a lot of denial about what, exactly, happens to her in the outside world. And it never really struck me as contrived. I have always taken comfort in thoughts like these, all the childlike thoughts you have to make sense of your place in the world. In the thought that the real you is asleep somewhere and you are actually dreaming a life. In the thought that there is a twin of you elsewhere on the planet. In the thought that you are really an adopted child and your parents are out there somewhere, perfect and searching.
—liz
Funny. I've had a couple of books that are taking me ages to read. But I found a copy of Camilla Gibb's Mouthing the Words in a crazy op shop on Redfern Street (for one dollar...), was intrigued and finished it in two days. Published in 2002, at a time when I was paying attention to new voices in Canadian fiction, I remember hearing good things about the book... so have been meaning to read it now for over a decade. I enjoyed it. The best thing about the book is Thelma, spiky and funny and traumatised, the main character, and I did enjoy following her journey from childhood to adulthood. I liked the sense of movement, growth and possibility while not understating what she'd been through and the affects of her childhood sexual abuse. It is a relatively slim book, and I found the characterizations of the minor characters a bit undeveloped. I wanted for them to be a bit more rounded or interesting; yet, perhaps it was a reflection of how the narrator related to the world too: at a distance. I was worried that some of the tropes of childhood sexual abuse were too familiar: anorexia, multiple personalities, a character who is abrasive as defence. I also nearly shouted at the page that with so much evidence of the abuse that no one except the narrator would mouth the words, and deal directly with what happened to her. It's in the backdrop that the abusive father is sent away, is possibly jailed, is kept away from the daughter... but keeps coming back. That other people know what happened but can't seem to say anything or provide support. But the character of Thelma kept on becoming more original and interesting throughout the book: I was engaged with the way she started to form friendships and look into her sexuality and step outwards into the world. Meanwhile, the terrible effects of the abuse and society and her family's inability to provide support or address the issue seem like they could be terribly true and I have the feeling this book will be staying with me for a while.
—Andy Quan
