The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst
ISBN: 0316778508
288 pages
published in 2003.
I had seen some favorable reviews for this book on other booklogs, and the plot sounded so interesting and unique that when I saw it at the library the other day I thought I should pick it up. It actually sucked me in rather fast and that’s mostly because the premise of the story was so promising that I was eager to find out how the beginning of the book tied into what I was told the book would ultimately be about.
It’s about a husband whose wife tragically dies one day after falling out of an apple tree in their backyard. He is left only with their dog, Lorelei, a Rhodesian Ridgeback that was his wife’s dog before it was his, and a trial of clues and secrets about his wife’s death that makes him question whether it was actually an accident. Fueled by a recent news story where a man was put into prison for operating on dogs to try and give them the power of speech, he tries to teach Lorelei how to communicate through a series of exercises and tests involving her sounds and specially made keyboards in an attempt to find out from her what actually happened that day in the apple tree. He eventually gets into correspondence with the man he saw in the news and falls into contact with a group of people that all follow the man’s influence and do operations on dogs to try and get them to speak. All of this is interspersed with recollections of their marriage and his wife, Lexy’s, outbursts and emotional issues.
In fact, although she was dead throughout the entire story, I intensely disliked Lexy’s character. Whether it was the author’s intention or not, she seemed to be the most whiny, needy, attention-craving person I’d ever heard of. All of her outbursts seemed contrived and ridiculous and her husband (the narrator) MUST have loved her, or else I can’t imagine how he would have put up with all of her bullshit.
In the end, although it was satisfying to have a conclusion to the story and a mystery solved, it was actually kind of a let-down. Parkhurst seemed to want to neatly wrap up a story that she herself had made wavy and confusing. I didn’t like the way she tried to resolve everything so nicely and I felt that her choices in how to direct the narrator’s behavior and actions were odd and almost counter-productive. It was an extremely unusual book with an extremely unusual plot. I think I understand the point she was trying to reach, but her attempts at being meaningful and poignant, I feel, have fallen a bit short.
