Tuesday, February 01, 2005
book six
The Dogs of Babel
Carolyn Parkhurst
This book was well-written, but so sad! The premise is that a linguistics professor (Paul) whose wife (Lexy) recently died, either by accident or by suicide, tries to solve the mystery of her death. The only witness was their dog Lorelai. So Paul decides he needs to teach Lorelai to speak or communicate in some way, so he can ask her what happened to Lexy.
But that's not what the book is really about. It's really about the relationship that Paul and Lexy had prior to her death, and how Paul works through his grief and anger at his loss. I thought it was touching, but so sad. And once again, I couldn't imagine my own marriage breaking down in the same way - even though the relationship depicted in this book was entirely different than the relationship in The Marriage Bed. There's some sort of squicky weird stuff about people who want to make dogs talk, which if you're an animal lover, will break your heart. Fortunately, I find it unlikely that the make-dogs-talk stuff was based on anything happening in today's society. (If you've read Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, you're undoubtedly thinking about Robert Hooke's dog experiments now... but that was in the 1600s!)
Carolyn Parkhurst
This book was well-written, but so sad! The premise is that a linguistics professor (Paul) whose wife (Lexy) recently died, either by accident or by suicide, tries to solve the mystery of her death. The only witness was their dog Lorelai. So Paul decides he needs to teach Lorelai to speak or communicate in some way, so he can ask her what happened to Lexy.
But that's not what the book is really about. It's really about the relationship that Paul and Lexy had prior to her death, and how Paul works through his grief and anger at his loss. I thought it was touching, but so sad. And once again, I couldn't imagine my own marriage breaking down in the same way - even though the relationship depicted in this book was entirely different than the relationship in The Marriage Bed. There's some sort of squicky weird stuff about people who want to make dogs talk, which if you're an animal lover, will break your heart. Fortunately, I find it unlikely that the make-dogs-talk stuff was based on anything happening in today's society. (If you've read Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, you're undoubtedly thinking about Robert Hooke's dog experiments now... but that was in the 1600s!)
Labels: book reports, relationships
