Paul Iverson’s world changes forever one day when his volatile wife, Lexy, dies after falling from a tree in the backyard. The only witness is their dog Lorelei, and in his grief, Paul wonders what Lorelei witnessed. Strange clues in their home lead him to believe Lexy’s death was not an accident, but was it suicide or homicide? Believing only Lorelei knows the truth, Paul, a linguist, sets out to teach Lorelei to talk.
This is the initial premise of Carolyn Parkhurst’s debut novel, The Dogs of Babel. The book is told both in the present, as Paul tries to come to terms with his intense grief and his frustration in not knowing the circumstances of Lexy’s death, and in flashback, as he remembers meeting and falling in love with Lexy, their courtship and marriage. As he works with Lorelei, he comes into contact with a group of underground researchers who use less than respectable means to introduce speech to dogs, and he also discovers the late night world of TV psychics, a fascination he finds his late wife also shared.
Parkhurst is, at times, a lovely writer, and she is most effective when detailing Paul’s grief. His love for Lexy is heartfelt, and her loss is devastatingly described for the reader:
“I remember my wife in white. I remember her walking toward me on our wedding day, a bouquet of red flowers in her hand, and I remember her turning away from me in anger, her body stiff as a stone. I remember the sound of her breath as she slept. I remember the way her body felt in my arms. I remember, always I remember, that she brought solace to my life as well as grief. That 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.”
While Paul’s grief feels very real, the character of Lexy is poorly drawn, leading readers to wonder why he grieves so much for such a shallow, immature woman. Parkhurst’s intention was clearly to make Lexy a volatile free spirit, someone suffering from unspeakable rage but someone whose whimsy would make that rage bearable. Consequently, Paul and Lexy’s first date consists of driving from Virginia to Disney World, eating only appetizers along the way because dinner marks the end of the first date. Unfortunately, this becomes precious rather than endearing. Lexy’s rages, in contrast, seem rather minor and not nearly threatening enough, so when Paul remarks at one point that he was thinking of leaving Lexy because of them, he appears fussy rather than savaged by his wife’s anger.
Not that all of Lexy’s characterization is poorly drawn; she is a mask-maker by trade, and her fascination with death masks is poignant and well developed. But wandering side plots involving a TV psychic Paul tries to find and a group of pseudo scientists who abuse dogs to try to teach them to talk distract from the main story and reduce the overall credibility. Yet Parkhurst is a skilled writer when she stays focused on the primary story and the narrator’s voice; I for one will look for her next book to see how she’s developed.
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