thing. It's a great moment of revelation for Hero. She may have understood the impact of her silence on the people around her, but she hasn't been able to see until that moment what an extremity it is. "What kind of person stops talking? Real people all talk. Perhaps the silence that had made a special person of me in my talking, arguing family really showed that I was a little mad, as well." People in this book are silenced. Hero by her desire to establish a separate, marvellous identity. Rhinda by a mother who sees mistakes everywhere, and stuff that needs to be kept under wraps. Miss Credence is silenced by a father who has taught her that she's so special it shouldn't be possible for her to put a foot wrong, so that when she does she can't seek help. Sammy is silent (or unintrusive, rather, since he hovers around the edges, spying and bouncing his basketball). Sammy doesn't know what to make of the family he finds himself with, and he's waiting to figure it all out. No one quite manages to silence Annie, which I think is very good, because Ginevra certainly tries to drive her mother into a more manageable position, manageable for Ginevra. But Annie is kind of shameless and irrepressible, in pretty much the same way that Ginevra is. And then, at the very end of the novel, the novel itself is silenced in a most interesting way. . . We are told