BOOKS: THE DOGS OF BABEL by Carolyn Parkhurst

"A Beautiful Masterpiece..."

THE DOGS OF BABEL
by Carolyn Parkhurst
(2003, Back Bay Books)

Trade Paperback, 264 pgs, $13.95 U.S.

After enjoying Carolyn Parkhurst's second book, LOST AND FOUND, I was eager to go back and read her first novel, the New York Times Bestseller, THE DOGS OF BABEL.

Could this be the same author?!

The two books are so very different in plot, characters, style, narration, and overall tone -- LOST AND FOUND has parrots staring at you from the cover, and is a fun, fast-paced adventure. THE DOGS OF BABEL is much darker, the cover photo is a dead woman and her dog. Way different.

And yet, DOGS OF BABEL is a beautiful masterpiece, an incredible accomplishment for a first novel. It's an amazing story of love, marriage and mental illness -- love does not always conquer all.

The narrator of DOGS OF BABEL (not a dog, as I thought, for some reason) is the dead woman's husband, a professor of linguistics, distraught over his young wife's apparent suicide. The only one who really knows what happened, whether Lacey fell from the tree, or jumped to her death, is her devoted Rhodesian Ridgeback, Lorelei.

In the depths of grief, Paul decides he will uncode the language of dogs, and teach Lorelei to speak so she can tell him what happened. He does ultimately solve the mystery, but with some very surprising twists and turns that will keep you reading.