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A review by jessicaxmaria
The Dictionary of Animal Languages by Heidi Sopinka
5.0
Coming-of-age novels are pretty ubiquitous—and for good reason. When you're young and figuring out the next decision, your choice is likely to affect the trajectory of your life. There is something arresting about that, given that I often reflect on my own choices and where I am and who I am today. Yet, I found THE DICTIONARY OF ANIMAL LANGUAGES mesmerizing because it's a, as the author calls it, coming-of-death novel.
Ivory Frame is 92 years old and has devoted her life to art and science in the titular project. Each chapter is titled an animal with a note (assumed to be Ivory's field notes) on that animal’s language. We inhabit her in first person, vacillate between her work, inner thoughts, conversations, and most of all her memories over the decades of her life. Those years encapsulate studying art, a steadfast friendship, heartache, war, and devastation. But it's a quiet novel for all of this. THE DICTIONARY is eloquent and beautiful, and as the memories are revealed to form the person we first meet at 92, I came to love Ivory deeply.
My copy is full of dog-ears and underlines. Like: "In order to forget one life, you need to live at least one other life. The young can withstand the shock of love because another life is still possible. It is only the old who die of heartbreak." I loved the line because I thought of it again later, three books later, in which a much younger character reflects on the many lives she's already lived by 35, due to choices and circumstance. Sopinka has a gift for lovely sentences that stay with you.
I have a profound love for this book, but wouldn't recommend to everyone. It's a writerly book, one that is full of poetic prose and sometimes abstractly woven narrative structures that may prove a challenge to some readers, or boring. It's slow and takes time but I found it incredibly rewarding.
Ivory Frame is 92 years old and has devoted her life to art and science in the titular project. Each chapter is titled an animal with a note (assumed to be Ivory's field notes) on that animal’s language. We inhabit her in first person, vacillate between her work, inner thoughts, conversations, and most of all her memories over the decades of her life. Those years encapsulate studying art, a steadfast friendship, heartache, war, and devastation. But it's a quiet novel for all of this. THE DICTIONARY is eloquent and beautiful, and as the memories are revealed to form the person we first meet at 92, I came to love Ivory deeply.
My copy is full of dog-ears and underlines. Like: "In order to forget one life, you need to live at least one other life. The young can withstand the shock of love because another life is still possible. It is only the old who die of heartbreak." I loved the line because I thought of it again later, three books later, in which a much younger character reflects on the many lives she's already lived by 35, due to choices and circumstance. Sopinka has a gift for lovely sentences that stay with you.
I have a profound love for this book, but wouldn't recommend to everyone. It's a writerly book, one that is full of poetic prose and sometimes abstractly woven narrative structures that may prove a challenge to some readers, or boring. It's slow and takes time but I found it incredibly rewarding.