1. Why did Isabelle stop speaking?

2. Did you like the author’s decision to include Isabelle’s voice as one of the narrators? How would the book have been different if it had been told from one perspective, just the parents’ perspective, or only Isabelle’s? Do you think this enriched the book or made it less dramatic?

3. If Isabelle were your child, how would you handle the reality of her not speaking? Do you think that Wilson and Ruth are right to order for Isabelle in restaurants and pretend as if everything is fine?

4. What does Isabelle mean when she thinks, “Sometimes, the safety she's created by her silence is more terrifying than the world from which she wanted to withdraw” (p. 85)?

5. In what ways is every member of the Carter family “as guilty of silence, really, as the next” (p. 110)?

6. The teacher at the mother-daughter art class says to Ruth, with regard to her refusal to indulge Isabelle’s behavior, “Discipline is an important component of art” (p 143). To what extent is Isabelle’s silence a form of discipline? To what extent is it connected to her art? Do you think Isabelle needs more discipline or less to overcome her silence?

7. “The doctor won’t succeed, he thinks; not one of them has. But Africa, he thinks—he is more certain than ever that somehow, the answer lies in Africa” (p 157). Why does Wilson get so hung up on Africa, after such small encouragement from Isabelle at the start of the book? How do you feel Wilson understands his daughter’s situation? How does Ruth? How does Jimmy?

8. What enables Isabelle to start speaking again?

9.How do Isabelle, Ruth, and Wilson change over the course of the book? Who do you think changes the most or the least and why?