Synopses & Reviews
In Paul's fantastic and even perilous search for the truth about his wife's death, he abandons his everyday life to embark on a series of experiments designed to teach his dog Lorelei to communicate. Could she really give him the answers he is looking for?
Review
"Carolyn Parkhurst's The Dogs of Babel so luminous, heartbreaking, comic, and daring is an astonishing debut. Parkhurst writes of love and loss, and, above all, of what we can and cannot know of one another, with power and deeply earned grace." Richard McCann, author of Ghost Letters
Review
"The brilliance of Parkhurst's novel lies in the subtle buildup of emotion as Paul digs deeper and deeper to discover the truth about the woman he loved....The beauty of the novel lies in how powerfully that emotional wave hits the reader. An unforgettable debut." Booklist, starred review
Review
"Carolyn Parkhurst writes as well about talking dogs and square eggs as she does about the limits of language and the intractable mysteries of the self. The Dogs of Babel is a strange, beautiful and very moving novel that asks us to look, in equal measure, at the puzzle that is grief and the puzzle that is love." Elizabeth Graver, author of The Honey Thief and Unravelling
Review
"A poignant, affecting tale....Parkhurst delivers a remarkable debut in quiet, authoritative prose....Highly recommended." Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Review
"Parkhurst tells her tale with considerable skill...a humanistic parable of the heart's confusions..." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"A neatly, almost perfectly constructed novel." Time
Review
"A heartbreaking exploration of memory and language, grief and redemption." Esquire
Review
"I read it without stopping, and I loved it completely." Anna Quindlen