Tuesday Book Review - Dogs of Babel

I have just finished a really lovely little book, The Dogs of Babel, by Carolyn Parkhurst . I started it with some trepidation, because I get very upset whenever I read about animal cruelty. After reading enough books, I no longer trust writers not to have animals come to a bad end. Well, this book seemed safe enough. It has a lovely elegiac pace to it. It makes me think of cello music. Every note seems so serious and stately.

The book is about Paul Iverson after his wife dies from a fall. She was up in the apple tree in the back yard and fell to her death. The book is about his struggle to learn whether or not she committed suicide. The only witness to the fall was their dog Lorelei.

Paul, a linguist, is determined to teach Lorelei to speak, so she can tell him if Lexy, his wife, fell or jumped. We come to know his wife in a series of memories of their life together.

This book has a sad, autumnal feel to it. All through it, I found myself looking out the window at the leaves falling and the smell of woodsmoke. This book is like that too. An ending, not a beginning. It has enough gentle humor though, that you like Paul. I don't want to spoil the ending, but I think Paul already knows the answer to his questions.

Grief, it seems to me, is the worst suffering. It is almost an insanity but with a cause. Making an accommodation, a peace, with someone's absence seems so impossible at times. It is a terrible price to pay for loving someone, but what else are you going to do?

Carolyn Parkhurst has created a small, wonderful meditation on the process of going on. The writing seems almost elegant. Nothing over the top. There is scene near the end of the book that I found so upsetting that I started crying right away, but it all works out – in case there are others like me who worry over fictional dogs as they worry over their own.

Did you ever see the wonderful movie, Babette's Feast? My mother, when she was telling me about it said, “I can't really describe it. It is a movie like Bach's music. It made me think of Bach.”. She was right. It is a quiet film, but I have always remembered it. It seemed like it held some dear, eternal truth in it.

I think that The Dogs of Babel is very much like Babette's Feast and Bach. Is there much higher praise than that?

The Dogs of Babel

Carolyn Parkhurst

Little Brown

$21.95