Leimbach, Marti 1963- (Martha Leimbach)

PERSONAL:

Born July 16, 1963, in Washington, DC; daughter of Leonard L. (an attorney) and Mary (a journalist) Leimbach; married; husband's name Alastair; children: Nicholas. Education: Harvard University, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1987; attended the University of California, Irvine, 1987-88.

ADDRESSES:

Home—England. Agent—Virginia Barber Literary Agency, 353 W. 21st St., New York, NY 10011.

CAREER:

Writer and novelist. Worked variously as a telephone operator, bartender, office temp, and fast-food worker.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Regents fellowship, University of California at Irvine, 1986.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Dying Young, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1990.

Sun Dial Street, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 1992.

Love and Houses, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.

Daniel Isn't Talking, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, and Mademoiselle. Author's works have been translated into several foreign languages.

ADAPTATIONS:

Dying Young was made into a motion picture starring Julia Roberts.

SIDELIGHTS:

Marti Leimbach is a novelist whose books often concentrate on issues of significant personal tragedy and redemption gleaned from difficult circumstances. Her first novel, Dying Young, which was made into a feature film starring Julia Roberts, concerns the complications of a romantic triangle that will ultimately be solved by the impending death of one of the participants. Victor Geddes, age thirty-three and wealthy, is suffering from advanced leukemia. Determined to die at home, Victor quits his chemotherapy treatments and places an ad in the Boston Globe for a caretaker and companion. Hilary Atkinson, twenty-seven years old, applies for the job, and soon she and Victor become lovers, living in a rented room on the Massachusetts coast. Their relationship is tumultuous, as Victor regularly harangues her, particularly about the types of book she reads. Hilary tries to justify Victor's difficult personality as intensified by his illness, concluding that in other circumstances, the two of them would not be together in the first place. As the year draws to a close and winter approaches, the two meet the thirty-year-old Gordon, who becomes Victor's friend and, secretly, Hilary's lover. At first experiencing all the difficulties of any other love triangle, the characters must soon face the uncomfortable fact that Victor's death will soon resolve the sticky situation. Jill McCorkle, writing in the New York Times, called the book "quite accomplished," and observed that "even with the weight of the plot, its ending is not easy or predictable." With this novel, Leimbach "proves herself to be both a deft writer and a shrewd judge of just how much sentimentality her traffic will bear," commented Paul Gray in Time.

Meg, the protagonist of Love and Houses, endures the departure of her unreliable husband in a novel where concepts of love and real estate mingle to generate psychological truth. Seven months pregnant, Meg concentrates on her career as a fiction writer while her husband, Andy, runs his bookstore and restores old books as a hobby. The couple puts their apartment on the market while they make plans to restore an old schoolhouse and turn it into their home. In the face of these stressful events, Andy suddenly walks out on Meg, putting the final exclamation point on the unreliability that saw him stand her up at the altar twice before they successfully managed to get married. To assuage her trauma, Meg turns to her friends for comfort, and begins her habit of comparing marriages and love affairs to house-hunting and home renovations. While dealing with the troubles caused by an absentee husband, Meg must prepare for the birth of baby Frances while also orchestrating the sale of their apartment to Theo Clarkson, her ex-lover. Library Journal reviewer Patricia Ross called the novel "an entertaining diversion" that is ultimately "like gossiping with an uncommonly witty friend." Jennifer Henderson, writing in Booklist, noted that Leimbach's "amusing" story of "how romance and real estate are intertwined offers a fresh take on married love."

Daniel Isn't Talking, a novel about a parent's struggle to understand and cope with her child's autism, is based largely on Leimbach's own experiences as the mother of an autistic son. Adam Feinstein, reviewing the novel in the Guardian, named it a "beautifully crafted and immensely touching novel which also depicts the dramatic effects autism can exert on the dynamics of the family." Protagonist Melanie Marsh and her husband, Stephen, soon realize that there is something different about her son Daniel. At first, Daniel acts like any other normal baby boy, but as he grows, he fails to achieve many of the normal developmental milestones. By age three, he still has not learned to talk, and he does not play or interact with his older sister. He is obsessed with only one toy and plays with it to the exclusion of all others. Worse, he is prone to alarming physical displays, such as dragging his forehead across the floor like a mop or smearing his feces on the walls. When Daniel is diagnosed with autism, Melanie is devastated. She endures the pain of knowing that her child's life will be difficult at best. She feels intense guilt, wondering if she is somehow at fault for Daniel's condition. Her appetite and normal functions fall off as she struggles with her son's condition. She defies both conventional experts and her husband, all of whom want to exile Daniel to a special school where he will be treated but little seen. Unable to reconcile himself to the situation or to cope with Daniel's problems, Stephen walks out on his family. Alone but determined, Melanie tries treatment after treatment for Daniel, selling off her possessions to pay for the skyrocketing costs of his education and treatment. Very little works for him until they encounter Irish behavioral therapist Andy O'Connor, who practices a type of play therapy that slowly begins to make a difference for Daniel. Outside the clinic, a romance between Andy and Melanie begins to take shape, providing her with physical and emotional affection during her own time of need. Soon, both mother and son are responding to a newly forged world that offers them a greater opportunity for hope.

Throughout the book, Leimbach "perfectly captures the single-minded intensity of maternal attunement" to her child's needs, noted Kim Hubbard in People. Booklist reviewer Kristine Huntley called the book "an absorbing and hopeful story about a mother's love for and faith in her child." A writer in Kirkus Reviews named it "a skillfully crafted and bracingly unsentimental look at one mother's love—sometimes tender, sometimes frantic, always fierce—in the face of adversity."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1997, Jennifer Henderson, review of Love and Houses, p. 1226; April 1, 2006, Kristine Huntley, review of Daniel Isn't Talking, p. 19.

Entertainment Weekly, June 9, 2006, Jennifer Reese, "Autistic License," review of Daniel Isn't Talking, p. 142.

Guardian (Manchester, England), September 2, 2006, "All the Colors of the Spectrum," review of Daniel Isn't Talking.

Harvard Book Review, summer, 2006, Hezekiah Smith, "Why Daniel Isn't Talking: My Week with Malik," review of Daniel Isn't Talking.

Independent (London, England), March 24, 2006, Michael Blastland, review of Daniel Isn't Talking.

International Herald Tribune, April 10, 2006, Eve Conant, review of Daniel Isn't Talking.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2006, review of Daniel Isn't Talking, p. 151.

Library Journal, February 15, 1997, Patricia Ross, review of Love and Houses, p. 162.

New Statesman, June 5, 2006, Helena Drysdale, "About a Boy," review of Daniel Isn't Talking, p. 53.

New York Times, January 14, 1990, Jill McCorkle, "Desperately Seeking Someone," review of Dying Young. p. 22.

People, April 10, 2006, "Books," Kim Hubbard, review of Daniel Isn't Talking, p. 45.

Publishers Weekly, March 20, 2006, review of Daniel Isn't Talking, p. 38.

Scotland on Sunday, June 4, 2006, Mark Fisher, "It's Good to Talk about How a Family Can Cope with Autism," interview with Marti Leimbach.

Time, January 8, 1990, Paul Gray, "Fantasy Life," review of Dying Young.

USA Today, April 26, 2006, Patty Rhule, "This ‘Daniel’ Will Speak to Your Heart," review of Daniel Isn't Talking.

ONLINE

Armchair Interviews,http://www.armchairinterviews.com/ (May 7, 2007), Helen Martin, review of Daniel Isn't Talking.

BookBrowse.com,http://www.bookbrowse.com/ (May 7, 2007), interview with Marti Leimbach.

Bookloons,http://www.bookloons.com/ (May 7, 2007), Mary Ann Smyth, review of Daniel Isn't Talking.

HarperCollins Publishers Web site,http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/ (May 7, 2007), interview with Marti Leimbach.

Mostly Fiction,http://www.mostlyfiction.com/ (May 1, 2006), Eleanor Bukowsky, review of Daniel Isn't Talking.

Reading Groups,http://www.readinggroups.co.uk/ (May 7, 2007), biography of Marti Leimbach.