The Other Side of Silence by Margaret Mahy

Hero is the quiet one in a loud, argumentative, brilliant family. Her mother became famous years ago after publishing a book on raising children. Her older sister has just returned after a long absence, with the teenaged son of her former boyfriend in tow. Her older brother stays at home all the time, supposedly working on his thesis. Her younger sister is chatty and boisterous, and her father stays home to care for them all. Hero loves her family but sometimes wants to escape them.

She frequently goes down the street to an old estate where she can roam the pathways in the trees and live in her own world for a while. Then one day the owner of the estate sees her and invites her in, and Hero discovers that neither her home world nor her private world is what she thought it was.

I really really liked Margaret Mahy's writing style. She's insightful, and her language is full of imagery. That is true of many authors, of course, but Mahy has a unique twist. I will be looking for her other books. Here are just a few of the quotes that I took down.

...back then when I was only twelve, I had two lives. The life I lived with my family was my real life, but the tree life--the early-morning life, which I lived before anyone else was up and about--was also my true life even though it was partly invented. Real life is what you are supposed to watch out for, but an invented life, lived truly, can be just as dangerous.

But I would probably have turned into Old Fairy Tales, which was the book everyone read to me when I was small--the book I used for secret advice . . .for divination. Even when I was as old as ten or eleven, I would try to take Old Fairy Tales by surprise, opening it anywhere, pointing with the first finger of my left hand (my fortune-telling finger) and taking advice from the line I found myself pointing at.

Every so often I'd catch a glimpse of the house, its weather-beaten tower standing at the end of the main block like an exclamation mark at the end of a magic word.

Real is what everyone agrees about. True is what you somehow know inside yourself.

My reflection showed briefly in puddles, shrunken now to hand size as I walked by. A muddy ghost with smudgy features was walking with me every step of the way, sole to sole with me. Soul to soul with me!

Booklinks:
~~ This reminds me of THE ONLY ALIEN ON THE PLANET by Kristen D. Randle because both books seem poised to become supernatural but turn out to be sadly realistic.
~~ I actually own a different book that's also called THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE. In Mahy's book, some people think Hero is deaf because she doesn't talk. This other book I have is about the Deaf community.