I chose this book, published in 1995, because I was looking for another book by the same author because Ms. Mahy is a New Zealander. (We’re studying Australia and New Zealand right now.) I finished it because, in spite of the stretch to my powers of imagination in believing some elements of the plot, the characters and some of the ideas expressed were intriguing and memorable.

Contact! Somewhere in my head all sorts of wheels and cogs began to spin and engage, pushing one another round and round. Miss Credence must have read this story when she was a child, and it had been like a turning cogwheel pushing other wheels in her head. Its energy flowed from wheel to wheel (that’s how stories worked for me, too), and Miss Credence had produced a story that was all her own.

Yes! That’s how stories work for me, too. I find somethng in a story, or maybe the whole story, and it pushes some other half-remembered story element, and the whole thing becomes a part of My Story. I would have loved this book for this description of the power of story if for no other reason.

Hero, the narrator of The Other Side of Silence, is on the other side because she’s a twelve year old elective mute; she doesn’t talk, except privately and infrequently to her older brother.

I almost never spoke. I had somehow magicked myself into silence. All the same, even in the heart of my silence, I was still a word child. . . .
I have already said that, though I didn’t talk, I was a word child. But in my family we were all word people. . . .
Supposing I had been turned into a book back then I would have wanted to turn into The Jungle Book, the story of Mowgli, a boy who lived in the jungle and talked the language of the animals. Or I might just have made do with The Secret Garden.

Aren’t you already becoming fond of Hero? Then, there’s her family. Annie, Hero’s mother, writes books about children and chid rearing and supports the family with her books and her speaking at educational conferences. Mike, Hero’s dad, keeps the house and enjoys doing so, even if his mother, Hero’s grandmother, is appalled that her son is wasting his intelligence and potential on a job as a homemaker. Hero’s big brother, Athol, spends his time reading and pretending to be absorbed in his studies while he takes in everything that goes on in the family. Her little sister, Sapphira, carries her book with her everywhere with her, Mrs. Byrne’s DIctionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words. She’s memorizing all the words in the book.

The story really begins with two incidents: Hero falls out of a tree into Miss Credence’s garden, and Hero’s older sister, GIinevra, comes home after “four years of vanishment.” These two seemingly unrelated occurences begin a chain of events that will eventually reconcile the two lives Hero believes she lives, her True Life with her family and and in relation to the outside world and her Real Life, a story that Hero lives inside herself and in her own thoughts.

I recommend the book, although the plot’s a bit outlandish. Hero’s family is somewhat out of the ordinary, too. Elective mutes don’t narrate their own books too often either, I would imagine. Still, it’s a great ride.