Praise
“Winthrop is brilliant at depicting the bewildering world and its assault on the senses of a struggling adolescent. In her quiet, tightly controlled space, Isabelle receives the world in all its startling variety - the colour of light filtered through an eyelid, the hairy back of an exterminator or the clucking sound of an indicator - and fixates on these things while her parents bicker around her. Like the silent characters that haunt Mrs Dalloway, To The Lighthouse and The Waves, Isabelle creates a space of interrogation. Gradually, the absence (Isabelle's voice) becomes a presence (silence) and it drives the narrative forward, pulling us in to this tight little triangle, forcing us to feel the frustration and the fear even as the snow falls on quiet, delicately wrought scenes of superficial domestic harmony.This extraordinary novel seduces as it also challenges: curiously provoking and offering up small flashes of illumination, like matches struck in that dim and meaningful space on the far side of language.”
— Natalie Sandison, The Times (London, UK)
“Like budding artist Isabelle, Winthrop is a master of observation, and her ability to crystallize themes in particular vignettes (fixing a broken phonograph, buying Christmas presents) brings this affecting family drama vividly to life.”
— Publishers Weekly
“This story of a family in crisis builds in emotion until a spellbinding climax brings things to a realistic and satisfying close.”
— Kellie Gillespie, Library Journal (starred review)
“Isabelle's silence, and the way she understands it, is surprisingly moving and beautiful. Winthrop shows it as both power and prison, commanding attention in a way that is staggering in its simplicity and inevitability. . . . Readers will find no pyrotechnics here, no ham-fisted author revealed behind the curtain pulling rhetorical levers to impress. This is a better - and a more important - book than that. In its small, quiet way, December is as brilliant and hopeful as its protagonist.”
— Julie Drew, The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“At the center of this beautifully observed novel is a child who will break your heart.”
— Ann Packer
“This is a modern fairy tale. . . December posits the old-fashioned thesis that family love can conquer many ills.”
— Polly Morrice, New York Times Book Review
“An emotional portrait of a family in crisis, engaging the reader from the novel’s opening pages.”
— Deborah Donovan, Booklist
