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The Study of Animal Languages: A Novel
By Lindsay Stern '13
Meet Ivan and Prue: a married couple—both experts in language and communication—who nevertheless cannot seem to communicate with each other.
Ivan is a tightly wound philosophy professor whose reverence for logic and order governs not only his academic interests but also his closest relationships. His wife Prue is quite the opposite: a pioneer in the emerging field of biolinguistics, she is bold and vibrant, full of life and feeling. Thus far, they have managed to weather their differences. But lately, an odd distance has settled in between them. Might it have something to do with the arrival of the college's dashing but insufferable new writer-in-residence, whose novel Prue always seems to be reading?
A dazzlingly insightful and entertaining novel about the limitations of language, the fragility of love, and the ways we misunderstand each other and ourselves, The Study of Animal Languages marks the debut of a brilliant new voice in fiction.