Product Description

The quirky premise of Carolyn Parkhurst's debut novel, The Dogs of Babel, is original enough: after his wife Lexy dies after falling from a tree, linguistics professor Paul Iverson becomes obsessed with teaching their dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Lorelei (the sole witness to the tragedy), to speak so he can find out the truth about Lexy's death--was it accidental or did Lexy commit suicide? In short, accelerating chapters Parkhurst alternates between Paul's strange and passionate efforts to get Lorelei to communicate and his heartfelt memories of his whirlwind relationship with Lexy. The first 100 pages or so bring to mind another noteworthy debut, Alice Sebold's brilliant exploration of grief, The Lovely Bones. Unfortunately, the second half of The Dogs of Babel takes too many odd twists and turns--everything from a Ms. Cleo-like TV psychic to an underground sect of abusive canine linguists--to ever allow the reader to feel any real sympathy for the main characters. Parkhurst's Paul Iverson can certainly be appealing at times, and his heartbreak is often quite palpable ("...for every dark moment we shared between us, there was a moment of such brightness I almost could not bear to look at it head-on.").But his mask-maker wife Lexy--Paul's driving inspiration--is a character whose spur-of-the-moment outbursts, spontaneous fits of anger, and supposedly charming sense of whimsy (on their first date, they drive from Virginia to Disney World, eating only appetizers and side dishes along the way), become so annoying and grating that it's hard to believe anyone could ever put up with her, let alone teach their dog to speak for her. Despite its cloying tone, The Dogs of Babel marks a notable debut. Parkhurst possesses a wealth of inspired ideas, and no doubt many readers will respond to the book, but one hopes that the author's future efforts will be packed with richer character development and less schmaltz. --Gisele Toueg

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90226 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-07
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com
The quirky premise of Carolyn Parkhurst's debut novel, The Dogs of Babel, is original enough: after his wife Lexy dies after falling from a tree, linguistics professor Paul Iverson becomes obsessed with teaching their dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Lorelei (the sole witness to the tragedy), to speak so he can find out the truth about Lexy's death--was it accidental or did Lexy commit suicide?

In short, accelerating chapters Parkhurst alternates between Paul's strange and passionate efforts to get Lorelei to communicate and his heartfelt memories of his whirlwind relationship with Lexy. The first 100 pages or so bring to mind another noteworthy debut, Alice Sebold's brilliant exploration of grief, The Lovely Bones. Unfortunately, the second half of The Dogs of Babel takes too many odd twists and turns--everything from a Ms. Cleo-like TV psychic to an underground sect of abusive canine linguists--to ever allow the reader to feel any real sympathy for the main characters. Parkhurst's Paul Iverson can certainly be appealing at times, and his heartbreak is often quite palpable ("...for every dark moment we shared between us, there was a moment of such brightness I almost could not bear to look at it head-on."). But his mask-maker wife Lexy--Paul's driving inspiration--is a character whose spur-of-the-moment outbursts, spontaneous fits of anger, and supposedly charming sense of whimsy (on their first date, they drive from Virginia to Disney World, eating only appetizers and side dishes along the way), become so annoying and grating that it's hard to believe anyone could ever put up with her, let alone teach their dog to speak for her.

Despite its cloying tone, The Dogs of Babel marks a notable debut. Parkhurst possesses a wealth of inspired ideas, and no doubt many readers will respond to the book, but one hopes that the author's future efforts will be packed with richer character development and less schmaltz. --Gisele Toueg

From Publishers Weekly
It's a terrific high concept: a woman falls from a backyard tree and dies; the only witness is the family dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback. To find out what happened-accident? suicide?-her grieving husband tries to teach the dog to talk. Parkhurst's debut novel has been getting a lot of pre-pub attention, probably mostly for this concept, because the execution of this first novel is flawed. The tantalizing prospect of linguistics professor Paul Iverson attempting to teach Lorelei to talk is given short, and erratically plotted, shrift. Paul's narration oscillates between his present-day experiences and the backstory of his romance with Lexy Ransome, a mask maker. The two meet when Paul drops by Lexy's yard sale, buys a device for shaping hard-boiled eggs into squares, then returns with a bunch of square eggs ("And we stood there smiling, with the plate between us, the egg-cubes glowing palely in the growing dark"). This incident, a maxi-combo of cute and sentimental, defines much of the couple's love story (on their first date, Lexy whisks them off to DisneyWorld), marking much of this novel as a sentimental, manipulative romance not unlike James Patterson's Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas; some readers will adore it, while others will gag even as the pages darken toward tragedy. Few will relish the sketchy account of Paul's work with the dog, which goes nowhere until it veers, bizarrely and unbelievably, toward an underground group performing illegal surgical experiments on dogs. Parkhurst is a fluid stylist, and there are memorable moments here, as well as some terrific characters (particularly the enigmatic Lexy), but one gets the sense of an author trying to stuff every notion she's ever had into her first book, with less than splendid results.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
The premise is simple, if strange. Paul, a linguistics professor, comes home from work to discover that his wife has fallen fatally from their back-yard apple tree. The only witness to the event is the family dog, Lorelei. Desperate to find out whether his wife's death was suicide or accident, Paul does what any linguistics professor would do: he sets about teaching the dog to talk so that she can tell him what happened. In between accounts of talking-dog experiments, we get flashbacks to Paul's blissful married life. His wife, a mask-maker who played whimsical trickster to his straitlaced academic, occasionally dabbled in the occult, and this gives Parkhurst the opportunity to write about tarot readings, spooky masks, and dream journals. But the mysticism, though ably rendered, gets tedious, while Parkhurst rushes through the experiments with the dog—the peg from which the book hangs—developing neither verisimilitude nor artful absurdity.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Heart-breaking love story
I have not cried so hard during a book since "The Time-Traveler's Wife". This book elicits emotion so real and raw that I have to remember I'm mourning over a fictional character! The dedication of Paul' quest to find out the truth of Lexy's death is a testament to true love. The plot seems a bit outlandish, but it's the story of one man's desparate search of answers to his wife's hidden world. I recommend it highly.

Bring it to the beach and people will think you're smarter than they are
Parkhurst's inaugural attempt is a worthwhile read. While it suffers from some clunky moments (the idea of suicide as a moment and the awful attempt to market it as The Lovely Bones with dogs) it has enough beauty and power underneath the mistakes to recommend it as an entertaining, lightweight beach read.

We all do it differently...
Yeah, yeah,yeah. Yada, yada, yada. Babel, babel,babel. We all know the story. Paul Iverson gets a call one day and goes home to find that his wife has fallen from a tree and is dead. The only witness is their dog Lorelei. But since the dog can't talk to explain to Paul whether his wife's death was an accident or suicide, Paul tries to teach Lorelei to talk. But the onion, if peeled a bit more, tells of the way a husband goes about his own personal grieving process. Carolyn Parkhurst understands that we all have our own way of grieving, our own way of avoidance. And that is what this wonderful book is really about. Just might stay with you awhile, haunting you, after you read it. It is supposed to do that. That, I am sure, is why she wrote it. Very well written and a great, though odd premise, only to be wrapped up in a wonderful lesson.