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Julia Roberts is negotiating to star in the movie version of Daniel Isn't Talking, and the role appears tailor-made for her.
This novel, hard to put down and sometimes painful to read, details a mother's guilt, depression and ultimate tenacity -- shades of feisty Erin Brockovich -- when she learns her son is autistic.
Author Marti Leimbach took a pause from her writing career (she also wrote the novel Dying Young, which became a movie that also starred Roberts) when her son was diagnosed as autistic. Her gripping novel is likely to add fuel to the debate over the cause and treatment of the syndrome that makes children withdraw during their toddler years.
Leimbach's book starts with an evocative scene of motorcycles, men and seduction. And that grabber of an opening never lets go.
Julia, er, Melanie Marsh is an American living in London after the cancer death of her mother and her lover's death in a motorcycle accident. She meets Stephen, a British banker whose confidence comforts her. They marry and have two children, Emily and Daniel.
But at 3, Daniel still doesn't speak. He also spreads his feces on walls and plays with only one toy, Thomas the Tank Engine.
Melanie devotes herself fully to her children at a cost to her marriage to Stephen, who can't bear having a son who is different.
When Daniel is diagnosed, Melanie goes into a freefall. She doesn't eat, blames herself and wonders whether the bug spray she used as a girl made her son autistic.
She sells off possessions to pay for the services of endless experts, most of whom offer no hope, until she gets the number of an overbooked Irish therapist named Andy.
Leimbach's strength is in creating characters who are human and fallible and become imbedded in your heart. Even the stodgy Stephen is drawn with sympathy.
Daniel Isn't Talking
By Marti Leimbach
Doubleday, 275 pp., $22.95
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