The Dogs of Babel: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: More sincerity awaits than the title implies
Review: I picked up this book because its main character is a male (like me) who teaches college linguistics (as do I) and owns a dog (like mine). How many chances will I get to read a novel in which the main character could easily be me? I thought I would be in for a quirky character or two and an original plot that would combine humor with some ponderings on language and the gaps between people, topped off with some late-night musings about the minds of dogs (à la Mousaieff-Mason's "Dogs Never Lie About Love"). The Dogs of Babel delivers on all these expectations, but then goes on to explore them more deeply and poignantly than I could have thought possible. The resulting story is one of love, loss, the desperation we feel when we can't communicate (remember: Babel is in the title), and the evil that we are capable of when we decide we must communicate at all costs. Of course, it helps to be a dog-lover, or else many of the novel's preoccupations might just seem silly. To tell any more would be to spoil it. Perhaps one of the most amazing things about the novel is that it unfolds from a male perspective that is absolutely convincing, and that is a rare feat for a female author.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Very thought provoking, interesting topic. Some parts were a bit grotesque, but there's a bit of mystery and romance woven in.

Rating:
Summary: Rare intensity and emotionally provoking
Review: I don't usually post reviews, but after reading this book, and after reading many of the reviews here, felt compelled to post a review.

I feel rather strongly many have missed the essence of the book.

Lexy is a character with huge intensity, something I relate intimately with. It is reflected in the success of her career, where success is measured by happy clients and work satisfaction. It is reflected in her capacity to love. Those who are loved by her such as Paul will have experienced a love so rare and so intense that that in itself gives meaning to life.

The intensity comes at a price. Such things which seem relatively unimportant or even trivial can affect such people so deeply that cumulatively it can cause thoughts of suicide from time to time. Therapy is often not the answer either, because you can't change other people or the world, and it's such things that make life itself not worth living. Lexy's motives are different though - she wanted to protect those she loved and felt she was best able to do so by removing herself. There is certainly credit to thinking that if one cannot be a good parent one should not be a parent.

Many things come to mind too - perhaps she felt she was in a cycle where she carried the same emotional baggage passed from generation to generation, and it was time to break it. Personally, as a parent with similar intensity and thoughts of suicide, I believe that my being aware of my cycle I am able to break it with my wife's support. If I felt I couldn't, maybe things would be different for me also. But even now, I understand the pain of living with suicidal thoughts without being clinically or even often depressed.

I feel the bizarre inclusion of the dog and related events are to illustrate an important point. Paul, loved as he has never been loved before, left alone with no answers, is compelled to go to extraordinary and bizarre lengths to find answers. Love has been known to have such effects on people so I am not sure I would criticise this area too harshly. The psychic hotline is a similar theme - both Lexy and Paul for different reasons were desperate and sought unconventional help.

The book as a whole is written with an openness and intensity that I have never seen elsewhere. It is not without its "flaws", but I feel in so much as nothing is perfect, they are relatively insignificant to the power of the book. It is only at the very end that we understand Lexy's motives and find answers to the puzzle - and in so doing, feel her pain.

People are all different - and I hope that those similar to Lexy feel the courage to stay on. These people may even spread deep and meaningful happiness to those whose paths they cross. And I hope those who can't imagine such intensity to at least understand that the world is one everyone shares, and callous actions may affect others in ways never actually intended.

Rating:
Summary: Awful
Review: Please...don't buy this book. Save your money. I read this book because I am a dog lover. I thought there might be something sympathetic in the story, but there is nothing. This is an awful book...all about a woman who is manically depressed, but no one recognizes it. I can't begin to comprehend why the Today Show would recommend this book as a highlight of its book club. The author must have a very powerful agent. I highly respect Little Brown as a publisher, but I can't imagine why they wasted paper for this story.



Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Evocative Writing, Marred by Impositions of Plot
Review: Carolyn Parkhurst has a wonderful way of evoking scenes from the merest whispers of words. This may be by necessity, as the novel is framed as alternating chapters of approximately five pages each in which she follows her character Paul Iverson through flashbacks of his life with his wife, Lexy, and the sad present that finds Paul piecing together the mystery of how and why Lexy died. The brisk pacing and Parkhurst's faculty for creating vignettes that your mind fleshes out make this a quick and not altogether unsatisfying read.

Lexy's character is certainly the most compelling, not the least because of her having died in the opening sentence. Lexy is complex in the most satisfying way, both laughter and sorrow, sunshine and darkness. Her appeal drives the novel, and we as readers wnat to know more about her. We, like Paul, want to unravel the mystery not only of her death, but of Lexy herself.

Unfortunately, Paul himself seems more alive (and believeable) in the flashbacks with Lexy. Alone with their dog, Lorelei, in the absence of Lexy, Paul is not just a figure of grief, but a character who seems too much an inhabitant of the page. That is, the flashbacks seem to be a part of a world, a fictive reality where we believe the characters continue on after we stop reading about them. But the Paul of the present seems too much a writer's sketch, and the second half of the book is fraught with worse sins of writing.

The passages about Wendell Hollis and the Cerberus Society are very nearly unreadable, and don't bear explanation here. The psychic, Lady Arabelle, is likewise an uncomfortable and ill-considered plot device. Not only do these two plot "twists" defy the reality Parkhurst so carefully crafted earlier in the novel, they threaten to highjack our interest in the story altogether. That they do not is perhaps partly due to the fact that we keep getting a glimpse of the past, of Lexy, and we forgive the author her indiscretions to work our way to the end with Paul.

The end, ultimately, does not redeem these clunky plot contrivances, but it does offer a beautiful summation of Parkhurst's talents as author. The final paragraph is wondrous, and pulls together the the colorful metaphors of Lexy in a jewel of a moment.

I wish Ms. Parkhurst would eschew the too obvious: Paul, a linguist, is married to Lexy (punning of the Greek "lexikos," pertaining to words, as well as the library of Alexandria of antiquity); Lorelei, the siren of Germanic myth, is the mute witness of Lexy's death that Paul is obsessed with; Lexy's rearrangement of books, we know well in advance, will be some sort of code; even the apple tree itself, with overtones of Eden.

The idea that Lexy fell from an apple tree at once sets the reader on notice that he must put aside credulity to a certain degree; this is both liberating for the author and a dangerous high-wire act to attempt. Likewise, the idea that Lorelei might "speak" to Paul is a trail of breadcrumbs that could lead to some dark woods. But the reader can embrace those parameters. Had the novel not over-reached its plot in the second half, this could have been a 4- or 5-star book. Paul's life as an academic, too, seems stitched-on, as if to compensate for his never having been as well sketched as Lexy.

But I can forgive the author these shortcomings. There is enough in Lexy, and in Parkhurst's evocation of her with a wink of fable, to make me hope her second novel does not fall prety to the sophomore slump, but rather reverses it. She has a powerful sense of human inter-relation, but drifts when her characters are alone. But most tellingly are those moments when this novel does sing, as it does in the second chapter when Parkhurst evokes the Homeric muse to write: "I sing of a woman with ink on her hands and pictures hidden beneath her hair." Parkhurst's gift is that she can sing, when she is not foisting chunks of plot upon us that feel like they belong in forgettable novels rather than flashes of a brilliant other world.

Rating:
Summary: Tender and mysterious!
Review: The book tells of college professor Paul's attempts to solve the mystery surrounding his wife Lexy's death in a fall from a tree. In alternate chapters, the professor recalls his relationship with his wife as well as the steps he takes to learn from his dog Lorelei why his wife died. He feels that, since his was dog present at the time of Lexy's death, the answer to his question is going to be revealed by teaching his dog to talk.

I enjoyed reading this book very much. Just as my husband said I would, I did cry. I liked the mystery of the story and the slow, tender way the author described the professor's relationship with his wife. The sadness and disorientation he felt after the death seemed very real. The hidden despair shown in spurts by Lexy was frightening and sad. The premise of the professor's trying to teach his dog to talk gave the book a special and interesting quirk.

An FYI: I would caution animal lovers that some parts of this book may not be to their liking because they do involve pain to dogs.

Rating:
Summary: ORIGINAL PREMISE THAT DELIVERS
Review: People seem pretty heavily divided on "DOGS OF BABBLE." I agree that the premise is more original than the delivery, but it is by no means bad. I enjoyed it very much. I won't categorize "DOGS OF BABBLE" with something like "MIDDLESEX" or "MY FRACTURED LIFE," but I think it is just as good as "LIFE OF PI" and "ATONEMENT." It dares to be different. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But, more often than not.

Rating:
Summary: Not what it's cracked up to be
Review: I agree with the review that says this novel is predictable, and I'd like to add that it's very sappy. The dialogue between him and his wife seemed made up and unnatural, and her character wasn't consistent.
I decided to read this book because I was lured in by the idea that he was going to find some secret unknown canine language. But it more explores this man's feelings about his deceased wife. It goes back and forth from past to present: (past - he reminsces of his wife and their relationship and present - trying to find the mystery of her death), but the "mystery" was very predicatable. By the time I reached the end, there was no "ah-ha!". After I finished this book, I felt very dissatisfied, like I'd wasted a week of my life on this let-down of a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Overrated
Review: I was overwhelmed with anger at the husband, Paul. Ms. Parkhurst has to have created one of the most self-absorbed, foolish and frustratingly stupid characters ever put in print. The reason his wife died is obvious to anyone who ever saw an Oprah episode or read a teen angst magazine. And yet this man is so stupid that he makes his poor, sweet, and defenseless dog suffer in order for him to "find" the reason. He was simply blind and too self-absorbed. The last straw for me came when he started obsessing over the "news" he heard from the psychic. This "news" was something he already knew. Yet he only obsessed and considered it a factor when a phone psychic told him about it.

Ultimately the plot contrivances in this were the quality of poor sitcoms. The animal cruelty was written with stereotypical characters and I found the details to be stomach wrenching - don't pick this book up if you are a dog lover.

The concept of the romance and story was interesting (it made me pick it up at the store), but I will not purchase another of Ms. Parkhurst's books.