Daniel Isn’t Talking

Daniel Isn’t Talking
Marti Leimbach

A powerful novel exploring the effects of autism on a young family from Marti Leimbach, author of the international bestseller ‘Dying Young’, who has experienced and dealt with the condition within her immediate family.My husband saw me at a party and decided he wanted to marry me.Melanie Marsh is an American living in London married to Stephen, the perfect Englishman, who knew the minute he saw her that she was to be his future. But when their youngest child is diagnosed with autism their marriage starts to unravel at great speed. Stephen runs back into the arms of his previous girlfriend while Melanie does everything in her power to help her son and keep her family together.And then one day Melanie hears about a man named Andy O'Connor, who calls himself a ‘play therapist’ and has a client list so long she can barely get him on the phone. Some say he's a maverick and a con artist of the first degree, but when he walks into the house and starts playing with her child, Melanie knows she's found the key to her son's success, and possibly to her own happiness.‘Daniel Isn't Talking’ is a passionate and darkly humorous novel that explores a mother's determination to help her child. A love story for grown ups, it somehow extends its wisdom far beyond the parameters of disability and into the substance of human nature itself. A tense, moving novel that will make you laugh out loud even as it breaks your heart.

From the reviews of Daniel Isn’t Talking:

‘A beautifully crafted and immensely touching novel that also depicts the dramatic effects autism can exert on the dynamics of the family’

ADAM FEINSTEIN, Guardian

‘Heartfelt, realistic and informative … Leimbach vividly portrays both overwhelming maternal love and the ins and outs of autism … Thought-provoking writing’

Sunday Times

‘One of the most enchanting and gripping books of the year … Managing to be darkly funny and touching by turns, Leimbach knows how to engage her readers completely, producing a narrative that has an almost filmic quality … From the first page you share in [Melanie’s] fears for Daniel, relish her small victories, and hold your breath when it looks as if she might find romance again. An outstanding novel’

Daily Mail

‘A voice of real authority … sharp and funny … The description of Daniel is raw and compelling’

Independent

‘An unflinching account of the exasperation of raising an autistic child; incredibly, Marti Leim bach manages to find hope’

LIONEL SHRIVER, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin

‘Marti Leimbach’s terrific novel manages to be both realistic and upbeat about a difficult subject and is shot through with wonderful moments of humour’

KATE LONG, author of The Bad Mother’s Handbook

‘[A] tender, involving tale of a family in crisis’

Woman & Home

‘Compelling’

Vogue

‘Leimbach is a writer who depicts matters of the heart vividly …Very readable and extremely moving’

Easy Living

‘A love story that delves beyond the parameters of disability and into human nature itself. An intense read, lightened by some great moments of dark humour’

Belfast Telegraph

‘Beautifully written and refreshingly unsentimental, Daniel Isn’tTalking is moving and totally engrossing’

Irish Examiner

MARTI LEIMBACH

Daniel Isn’t Talking

A NOVEL

Daniel Isn’t Talking

Contents

Review (#ucb05e769-c274-5026-9a04-349901496355)Title Page (#u1b9624a7-2c6b-5c2c-8a97-582b2b259939)Daniel Isn't Talking (#u2b353c39-2dc4-55c7-a3b2-85f0f080f03a)Chapter One (#ua6067f7d-a586-5505-a0ee-20a0f4bc4c08)Chapter Two (#u2cd6995d-861a-58a2-b26d-eab29665de76)Chapter Three (#ufeeb854c-f1fd-5497-8b73-d018f38e0538)Chapter Four (#u6b61647a-0252-5122-bc2a-3e86130ddf7c)Chapter Five (#u933a3eb9-fc5c-5f3e-bdf8-018d1fe47bad)Chapter Six (#uf393eb07-e2e5-5abe-81c5-454a2a133417)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty One (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Two (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty Three (#litres_trial_promo)P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features … (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)By The Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

1 (#u1a50b7e6-746b-5efd-8cb8-6f90f779f9ff)

My husband saw me at a party and decided he wanted to marry me. That is what he says. I was doing an impression of myself on the back of a motorcycle with my university sweetheart, a young man who loved T. S. Eliot and Harley-Davidsons, and who told me to hang on to him as we swept down Storrow Drive in Boston, the winter wind cutting through our clothes like glass. If I allow myself, I can still remember exactly the warm smell of his leather jacket, how I clung to him, and how in my fear and discomfort I cursed all the way to the ballet.

We sat on the plush red seat cushions and kissed before Baryshnikov came onstage, the whole of his powerful frame a knot of kinetic energy that leapt as though the stage were a springboard. I always insisted on sitting up front so I could appreciate the strength of the dancers, the tautness of their muscles, the sweat on their skin. My lover of motorcycles and poetry once licked my eyeball so quick I hadn’t time to blink, and told me he dreamt of crossing a desert with me, of living on nothing but bee pupae and dates. In warm weather he trod across the university campus in bare feet and a four-week beard, singing loudly in German, which was his area of study, to find me in the chaste, narrow bed allocated to undergraduates. There, while the church bells chimed outside my window, he took his time crossing my body with his tongue.

‘I’m Stephen,’ said my husband, a stranger to me then. Dark jeans, expensive jacket, an upper lip that is full like a girl’s, against a startlingly handsome face. ‘Are you plugged into something?’

My legs were straddling empty air, my back vibrating with an imagined Harley engine, my arms wrapped around the nothingness in front of me. I was laughing. I wasn’t sure at first that Stephen was even speaking to me. I was surrounded by young women – he could have been addressing one of them. But the crowd I was entertaining with this impression seemed to shrink back with Stephen’s approach. Apparently, they all knew him, knew the type of man he was and to back off with his arrival. I didn’t know anything. My lover, now dead, was killed in a highway collision on his way to work one morning. I couldn’t even drive a motorcycle, knowing only to hang on to the boy in front of me, whose head was shielded by a shining black helmet. His precious head.

‘Pretending to be on a motorcycle,’ I said. Suddenly, the whole idea seemed stupid.

‘Do you like motorcycles?’ asked Stephen.

‘I used to.’

‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked, nodding toward the bar. ‘A glass of wine, perhaps?’

I said no, I don’t drink. This wasn’t actually true, but I had no idea I was speaking to my future husband. He was just some guy. None of my answers were supposed to matter.

He smiled, shook his head. He wasn’t easily dissuaded. ‘Let me guess, you used to drink,’ he said.

He was the first man that night who looked right at me instead of slightly over my shoulder, who didn’t make me feel he was comparing me to a whole list of others. And the first man who had offered me a drink, I might add. ‘I’ll have a glass of white wine,’ I told him.

He nodded. And then, without a shimmer of uncertainty, he reached out and touched my hair with his fingertips as I searched the floor with my eyes.

‘Canadian?’ he asked.

‘American.’

‘What brings you to England?’

A combination of circumstances, that was the truth. But it was far too much to explain. ‘I don’t really know,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Yes you do.’ He was so confident, his eyes steady on me as though he’d known me all his life. ‘You didn’t just get lost.’

‘Yes, that’s exactly it. I got lost.’