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."). 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. Unfortunately, the second half of The Dogs of Babel takes too many odd twists and turns-everything from a Ms. The first 100 pages or so bring to mind another noteworthy debut, Alice Sebold's brilliant exploration of grief, The Lovely Bones. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |