IT’s MY CHOICE

Have you read a book where a dog plays an important role in the plot of the book? In my case, I’ve read two of them, and both has a touch of death. In this review, I would talk about Carolyn Parkhurst’s debut novel, Dogs of Babel (also known as Lorelei’s Secret in the UK).

I still don’t get it why it was entitled Dogs of Babel, I still think that Lorelei’s Secret is the right title for it. Never mind that now. Let’s proceed. Dogs of Babel is about Paul Iverson’s (a linguist) search for the reason why her wife, Lexy, jumped from their apple tree in their backyard on a gloomy day in October. There was only one who can testify what really happened. The problem was that that the one who saw the incident could not speak… it was Lorelei — a Rhodesian Ridgeback, a creature with a distinctive ridge of hair running down the middle of its back running in the other direction, four paws and a waggling tail — who have seen everything.

The police had concluded that her wife’s fall was an accident. But he was certain that his wife’s death was not a mishap at all, it must be something more than the taste for an apple. He looked around the house for clues: a steak bone, a torn part of a box with the letters “CLE,” a phone call to a psychic, their books were drastically rearranged. But he can’t unravel the secrets behind these clues. And then, he had an idea. He decided to leave the school where he taught students, not to have a vacation and reminisce the days he had with Lexy, but to teach his dog how to speak like a human being in the hope that Lorelei could tell everything what had happened in that fateful day.

Yes, I know, it’s weird, trying to make a dog speak. I haven’t heard of such experiments. But of course, the book was not about that. As the book unfolds, I knew more about Lexy, Paul and Lexy’s life before their marriage, how they met, their first ever date at Disney World, how Lexy got Lorelei, how Lorelei got her name. In the end, Paul had found the answer to his search, thanks to Lorelei.

Towards the end, I was somehow moved how the story of Paul was crafted. The words that Parkhurst put in Paul’s voice were really strong. I like the book but it did not pass my standards as a and it’s now one of my favorite books, I was expecting more from it as it is an international bestseller, but nevertheless, I enjoyed the book.