Rating: 
Summary: Attention dog lovers!
Review: Only a true dog lover could fully appreciate this book. The book focuses on the experience of loss and aid of the company of a dog, a true companion. The author has an exceptional way of allowing the reader to fully experience the emotions that run through the main character, a linguist who tries to teach his dog to "talk" so that she may reveal the mystery behind his wife's death. His attempts lead him in a completely different direction than he intended, but they ultimately accomplish his goal. It was difficult to put this mystery book down once I began reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Please don't miss this wonderful novel
Review: Please don't pass on reading this book. To say that it is a book about dog abuse does it a terrible injustice. There are a few mentions about a group of people who abuse dogs and there is a graphic description on ONE page of the book but that is all. This novel is in fact a very moving tribute to the close relationships most all of us enjoy with our pets and how sometimes we may actually know them better than we do the people closest to us.Paul Iverson is a linguistics professor who calls home one day to say hello to his wife, Lexy, only to be told by a man who answers the phone that he needs to come home immediately. Lexy has been found dead in their backyard, lying on the ground next to an apple tree. Their dog, Lorelai, was home with Lexy at the time but of course she can give Paul no answers as to what happened. In his grief, Paul loses touch with reality and decides that he will try to teach Lorelai to talk. The premise here may sound far-fetched but Paul trying to teach Lorelai to communicate with him is a small part of the novel, something that runs in the background. The bulk of the story centers around Paul and Lexy's relationship as told in flashbacks as Paul recalls the day he first met Lexy, their courtship and their life together as a married couple. Through reflection as well as certain clues that Lexy leaves behind Paul comes to the realization that he didn't know his wife the way he thought he did. And through his grief the presence of Lorelai is truly a comfort to him and in the end provides him with the knowledge he needs to be at peace with his wife's death.
Rating:
Summary: I love Paul Iverson. . .
Review: Paul Iverson is the husband we all want. He loves his deceased wife so much that he has a hard time facing her shortcomings. I love this author's style of writing; and if you listen to the audio version, Erik Singer does an excellent job at the narration. Yes, the parts about the dog mutilation are very disturbing, but they are a stark contrast to how Paul feels about his dog Lorelei. Every time I listened to part of this book, it made me want to hug my dog. You can tell this author loves and appreciates dogs very much. I also liked the sensitive way that Lexy was portrayed. She was mentally ill, but that was only part of the picture--she was also a gifted artist and a loving wife. Her illness was something she could not control but fought hard against. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Hated It, A Terrible Book
Review: It seems like a lot of authors are turning to the preposterous in a desperate attempt to be "original." We've had an autistic narrator in THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME (done skillfully), a time traveling husband in the dreadful THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE and a baby born "old" who grows younger with each passing year in the sometimes good, sometimes bad, THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI. THE DOGS OF BABEL, however, may be the the very worst of these trite and "gimmicky" books. What these "new" authors don't seem to realize is that originality springs, not so much from a gimmicky premise as it does from a fresh perspective on universal problems. At their core, people are interested in...people, not literary gimmicks. THE DOGS OF BABEL begins interestingly enough. Paul Iverson, a linguist in suburban Virginia comes home one day and discovers that his wife, Lexy Ransome, has died in a fall from an apple tree. The only witness to her accident was the couple's Rhodesian Ridgeback, Lorelei. Paul, who feels he has to know exactly what happened, makes the outlandish decision to teach Lorelei to speak in "human" language. I could accept this decision at the time it was made because Paul is, strangely enough, grief-stricken (I say "strangely enough" because Lexy was such a hateful character.) Up until this point, the novel seemed to me as though it was going to be a rather poignant and very human exploration into the world of love and loss and how one man (Paul) deals with his grief at losing the wife he loved. Unfortunately, instead of exploring the rich realm of human emotions, the book took a very dark and macabre turn into what seemed to be a desperate effort at latching onto an as-yet-untried gimmick. Part of the problem for me regarding this book was the fact that Lexy was a thoroughly unlikeable and extremely annoying character. Maybe the author simply meant to make her quirky, I don't know, but even most quirky people have good, endearing qualities. Lexy, however, did not. Lexy, even filtered through Paul's love for her (for that is the only way we "know" her), comes off as a selfish, self-centered, destructive woman who's filled with rage and loathing. Paul, in loving her, simply comes off as supremely stupid...a total fool. I suppose he and Lexy really were "made for each other." Like a lot of other readers, I couldn't stand the animal abuse in this book. Not only was it painful and difficult to read, it was twisted and totally unnecessary to the story. The book would have been so much more poignant and better without it. THE DOGS OF BABEL was obviously written with an extremely heavy hand. Parkhurst seems to want to beat her readers over the head with her heavy-handed symbolism and metaphors. And it simply doesn't work. Symbols and metaphors need to be handled with a light touch. In this book, they're so heavy they pull the whole story down even further than it would have been without them. Even Lexy's profession as a mask maker was highly symbolic (and far too heavy-handed.) Then there's the prose. I hated it. I thought it was "sketchy" and made the book sound like one of those mass market novelizations of films. In the end, I found THE DOGS OF BABEL to be trite, shallow, dishonest, extraordinarily gimmicky and so filled with heavy-handed symbolism it made me groan. The only book I've read recently that I thought was as amateur and juvenile in its execution was THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE. In that book, there were no likeable characters. In THE DOGS OF BABEL, we at least have one likeable character, but only one...Lorelei.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully written
Review: I could not put this book down. For those who are concerned with the animal abuse aspect, it is very small portion of the book, and not condoned by the main character. It is a beautiful book that describes the relationship between Paul and his wife Lexie before she died. The book's focus is more on their relationship and the past rather than the present. Parkhurst does an amazing job capturing the grief-striken feeling of losing someone you love and the depression that goes along with it. A must read!
Rating: 
Summary: Great but disturbing read
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but a word of warning: It is NOT for the faint-hearted. The things is, as a reader you have to get past the extremely disturbing parts and see the book as a whole--much like you have to do with other novels that take you someplace difficult (think McCrae's "The Bark of the Dogwood" or any of the other thought-provoking books dealing with the darker issues life has to offer). That said, "The Dogs of Babel" IS well-written and worth a shot--just don't read it right before bedtime.
Rating:
Summary: Keep an open mind...
Review: After reading some of the other reviews, I have to wonder if we were all reading the same book or did some of us just skip & skim... It may sound almost insane that a man would try to teach his dog to speak but one would have to look at it from Paul's point of view: he was grief-stricken. He had just lost his wife & wanted what anyone of us would have wanted had a loved one's death occurred & literally NO ONE was there to retell the events. He wanted closure. Yes, this book does contain acts of animal abuse but Paul does not condone the acts by the group mentioned in the book. In fact, he finds them reprehensible. Perhaps it's that part of him that's in all of us that has to slow down at the site of an accident that draws him to initially explore their ideals. I think that it's a very good book that ties up all of the loose ends without having an overly happy/unrealistic ending.
Rating:
Summary: Very good book, some parts very diffucult to read
Review: This book is powerful in the sense that a man is looking for the reason on why his wife died, from his wife's dog. It is a testimoney to the love of a man and a woman which is overshadowed by many dark and light pathos, plus of the innocence and love of animals. Their dedication and loyalty. For a person like myself, who has done rescue work for abused dogs, parts of this book were extrenely hard for me to read. But the ending is beautiful.....This is a a really good read and takes you thru a wide spectrum of emotions. Highly recommended. This is a whole new view towards relationships in writing today. GM
Rating:
Summary: Exploring the grieveing process; man and animals
Review: When Paul Iverson's wife dies, he becomes obsessed with finding out how she died. He turns to the only witness: the couple's Rhodesian Ridgeback, Lorelei. He wants to teach Lorelei how to talk, and how to tell him what really happened the afternoon of his wife's death. The book explores one man's grieving process, and how he reacts to those around him. He becomes a joke at work, and begins a short correspondence with a prison inmate who succeeded in making a dog "talk". These scenes were the most disturbing in the book, because as an animal lover, I found it extremely difficult to read. Thankfully, the scenes are short, and through the experience in the book, Paul realizes that he needs to center himself. It struck me that Paul's life and work focus on language and communication; yet, he and his wife could have solved a number of problems had they just communicated better with each other. Overall, this book is a great accomplishment. It is especially good when you read it with your dog at your side.
Rating:
Summary: "let be be the end of seem"
Review: Okay, let's get this settled right away: This book is not about dogs, although it features a Rhodesian ridgeback named Lorelei as one of the main characters; it's not about solving a crime, although the protagonist, Paul, is ostensibly unraveling the mystery of his wife's death; and it's not about linguistics, although Paul, in the course of unraveling the mystery, tries to teach Lorelei to talk. The reader who picks the book up because of its jacket blurb or book club status may be disappointed. The Dogs of Babel is about the intimate, exquisite, and often painful relationship between two people, each locked in his or her own dysfunction. It is also one of the most poignant portraits of bipolar disorder i've ever read. I agree with other reviewers that Parkhurst's quirky plot devices, which at first draw the reader in, become a bit much as the novel progresses; however, by that time, i was thoroughly caught up in the dance of Paul and Lexy's marriage. Paul, the surviving spouse, is more engaged in understanding the relationship after his wife's death than he ever was while she was still living. And Lexy, though dead at the opening page, seems curiously more alive than Paul throughout most of the book. As for Lorelei, hers is the ancient role of the dog: to guide the spirits of the dead to their rest. I highly recommend this book to those psychologically-minded persons who enjoy exploring and understanding the range of human emotional experience.
| 
