SRP Book Review #22

The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst

261 pages

This book is about a man named Paul whose wife, Lexy, dies after a fall from a backyard tree, witnessed only by their Rhodesian Ridgeback, Lorelei. Paul's grief drives him to call upon his knowledge as a linguist to try to teach Lorelei to speak so that she can tell him what happened. Frustrated with his research, he becomes involved with a group of men who also are trying to teach dogs to speech, often resorting to mutilating the dogs to make speech more possible.

Let me just say that at one point, I was so worried about Lorelei that it was interfering with my enjoyment of the book, so I had to look to the end to see how she ended up. One thing I enjoyed about the book was the way Paul addresses the reader--I wish he could've taken a minute to tell me how worried I should be about what's going to happen to Lorelei.

What the book is really about is Paul's grief. He becomes absorbed in his project with Lorelei as a way of simultaneously escaping what has happened to Lexy and staying close to her.