Thelma is six years old. Life at home is unsettling and disturbing; her father's games are not enjoyable and her mother dotes on Willy, the favoured child. When her parents move to Canada Thelma smuggles her imaginary friends with her in her suitcase. Thelma's life is mostly lived in her fertile and extraordinarily vivid imagination. And she still asks every adult she meets to adopt her...Mouthing the Words tells Thelma's story though to adulthood and her return to England - to study law at Oxford - in a novel that is by turns harrowing, terrible and wonderfully funny. Through sexual abuse, anorexia and borderline multiple personality disorder, Thelma retains her spirit, wit and imagination. Reminiscent of Jeanette Winterson and Sylvia Plath, Mouthing the Words is a remarkable and inspiring fiction debut.