SO MUCH TO TELL YOU. . .

From Australia, a first novel in the form of a diary by a 14-year-old girl who has suffered a trauma so severe that this is her one form of verbal communication. Gradually, as Marina begins to warm to Mr. Linder, her English teacher, and to some of the other students in the boarding school to which she has been sent after leaving a psychiatric hospital, salient facts about her are revealed: her face has been terribly disfigured in an accident; her mother has effectively abandoned her by going to New York with a new stepfather; her father is in prison; in her cold, uncommunicative family, speech was always perilous, liable to be misunderstood and cause trouble; silence was--and is--a sanctuary, a fortress, a prison. Skillfully, as Marina describes the other girls, the author shows them through her anguished eyes but also more objectively as young people who are trying--in their individual, imperfect ways--to help Marina despite her mysterious hostility. Marsden artfully contrives Marina's narrative to maintain suspense as her story emerges. Ultimately, as Marina begins to reach out, acceptance by others gives her the strength to begin the healing process by reaching toward reconciliation with her father--whose crime is finally known to the reader. A moving story, effectively demonstrating that language is a powerful symbol of emotions flowing between people.