The Dictionary of Animal Languages by Heidi Sopinka - Aug 2019 LTER

I got this one! Anyone else want to discuss it?

I couldn't finish it & I really wanted to like it. I tried at least 3 times. What did you think? Is it worth another go? I'm not just asking for politeness' sake. Whenever I'm looking at a book that you have, I check to see if you've rated it: your opinion means a lot to me :)

>2 susanbooks: Oh man I just started this one (whoops) and it is really heavy sledding. Typically I either click with books or I don't, but I can slog through if I'm interested enough. In this case I want to know more about Leonora Carrington and her artistic life; I am taken aback at this framing (lol) device of animal language alphabet whatever, which is a little unfortunate since it seems like the conceit of the WHOLE book, but it has NOTHING to do with actual Carrington afaik. I dooooo not care about this Skeet guy or his very Oedipal relationship with his cardboard mother, either. But I feel kind of honour bound to finish it since I promised to write a review! That....doesn't help.

I mean I could say I scented disaster on the wind finding out she named the central artist character "Ivory Frame" but that seems a little unfair. (But it's true.)

Get. Out. Of. My. Head! That's exactly everything I was thinking, especially the egregious Ivory Frame thing. Ugh. And the way the characters talk to each other. Is it just me or did it seem like most sets of quotation marks contained stilted mini-essays? I'm in academia in humanities & we don't even talk like that, so what was up with those 2?

I feel like you're more dedicated than I am. (After all, I already wrote my review without finishing the book.) Will you be my guinea pig, let me know if the book gets better & I should jump back in? I'm going through a dry spell & maybe Dictionary of Animal Languages will be the magic key to unlock all the good books for me -- or, more likely, not, but I do want to know if you end up changing your mind.

Oh, the dialogue is terribly stilted. Lack of quotation marks doesn't necessarily bother me, but there's no real reason for it here and the voices aren't that well-differentiated.

I will let you know! Today I ignored it in favour of reading Ninth House /o\