Purchase
THE STUDY OF ANIMAL LANGUAGES
By: Lindsay Stern
Penguin Books
February 2020
On Sale: February 18, 2020
Featuring: Ivan; Prue
256 pages
ISBN: 0525557458
EAN: 9780525557456
Kindle: B07D6C9JX7
Trade Size / e-Book (reprint)
Add to Wish List
Literature and Fiction
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?
Into this delicate moment barrels Ivan's unstable father-in-law, Frank, in town to hear Prue deliver a lecture on birdsong that is set to cement her tenure application. But the talk doesn't go as planned, unleashing a series of crises that force Ivan to finally confront the problems in his marriage, and to begin to fight - at last - for what he holds dear.
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.
| 
© 2003-2026