Tied with Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, the post of which you'll find here, this is my favorite book. Caught reading while waiting in line this time through, I received many comments such as, "That looks like a well-loved book," and (hooray!), "What are all of those post-its in your book?" I got to explain a little about my book blog. However, try to give a synopsis of this book without making it sound really dumb, weird, and uninteresting. It's hard. There's a paragraph I found this time through that is going to become my explanation of it. Let's put it in now in case anyone has not yet read it and wants to give it a try! First, a briefing to bring you up to speed. I promise, it's not really a spoiler because it is information you learn from about the first page anyway... But this guy named Paul, who is a linguist professor, learns one day that his wife (Lexy) has died of a fall from their apple tree and their dog Lorelei was the sole witness to the incident. There are a few weird things different about their house that day when he comes home. And now, the paragraph from page 8 in my copy (chapter one):
Maybe these events mean nothing. After all, I am a grieving man, and I am trying very hard to find some sense in my wife's death. But the evidence I have discovered is sufficiently strange to make me wonder what really happened that day, whether it was really a desire for apples that led my sweet wife to climb to the top of that tree. Lorelei is my witness, not just to Lexy's death itself but to all the events leading up to it. She watched Lexy move through her days and her nights. She was there for the unfolding of our marriage from its first day to its last. Simply put, she knows things I don't. I feel I must do whatever I can to unlock that knowledge.
So there you go. This man of science is also a man of great feeling and his topsy-turvy wife has always been a sort of whimsical and mysterious creature. I feel as if Lexy would have approved of this coping mechanism.
From the very first sentence, speech is of the utmost importance. I've mentioned that Paul is a linguist, but it goes beyond his knowledge. Check out this sentence, emphasis mine, at the very beginning of the book: "Here is what we know, those of us who can speak to tell a story..." The speakers, the humans, know by verbal communication. Their knowledge is limited. The things that are unspoken: why Lexy was in the tree, why the book cases were rearranged, why and how the steak was eaten, the feelings, the moods, the triggers that make us do each and every little thing we do, are all unkowns. From the beginning, Paul is referring to the fact that Lorelei may know more than he, or the neighbors, or detectives know about the day his wife died tragically. His grief brings to light that Lorelei knows all about Lexy and all about him, but that what she knows cannot be made known... yet. And so he proposes to teach his dog to talk. I love Parkhurst's descriptions of other language acquisitions in dogs. The studies of various breeds (all of which I Google searched... I'd never heard of a keeshonds, but the look kind of like chow chows) in different times and places meeting varying levels of success was an excellent segue into Paul's own attempts to communicate with his Rhodesian Ridgeback. It made it seem like he was not completely crazy. I also loved Paul's way he would have liked to explain his new endeavor to the academic world (page 13 in my copy. "I sing of a woman with ink on her hands and pictures hidden beneath her hair..."). It was very reflective of the Trojan epics The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer. This is Paul's own odyssey.
I love the fact that I can relate to the book in some small ways. Paul wonders what Lorelei is really thinking when he looks at her. I wonder what goes on in my dog's head, too. I feel guilty leaving her alone while I am at work, but I wonder what adventures she gets up to. I think my cats are just fine without me home to give them attention during work, but I think Akira gets bored and lonely. In the intelligence testing Paul does with Lorelei, he experiments with syllables to see if she actually knows her name. I do this all the time with my pets. The verdict: Akira and Polly know their names. Fiona could not care less. (Polly and Fiona are cats, by the way).
In chapter four, Paul discusses the fact that the most unkind thing he has ever done was to trespass on a widow's grief, though she probably never found out about it. This came at a good time for me. During our reading of The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted, my boss's best friend died and she was having trouble with how to cope. She did not want to go to the funeral, though did decide to go eventually. She said, "I loved him in life." I do not consider this book to be a morality tale, but one thing I did learn was never to judge a person on how they grieve.
Isn't the way that Paul and Lexy met just the best? (Actually, my notes say "Freaking cutest, weirdly romantic meet-up ever! I love garage sales. I love how silliness can be so charming). The garage sale and the square egg press and the way he took her a plate of square eggs later just melted the quirkiest little romantic notion in my heart the first time I read it. I have seen square egg presses for sale and nearly bought one more than once... just to have. Just as a keepsake belonging to this book and its memories. I'd also make square devilled eggs. I similarly have always wanted to meet a Ridgeback in real life. Each time I read it, I look up pictures of them. Before I did, I thought Lorelei would look much like my old lab, Max, who was super intuitive with my moods. Alas. She would not look like Max. However, imagine my excitement when, as I was reading through this time and discussing the book with my dad, he told me that our Great Dane mix from my childhood, fondly remembered as one of the best dogs of all time, was actually a Great Dane/Rhodesian Ridgeback mix! I wish I had a picture to share with you, but I don't think we have any pictures at all of Marge, which is a real pity.
Here's a nice picture of a Rhodesian Ridgeback showcasing its most distinctive feature.
Chapter Five begins with a talking dog joke that bids the question that, if a dog could talk, would it be honest? I think so, don't you? I tend to think they are far more innocent than we are. Also, HOLY COW, is Parkhurst a wordsmith! Paul picks Lexy up for her first date and describes the way that he had been recalling her since their first meeting had been slightly off and each little difference in her appearance. "I saw now that she was beautiful." practically gives me chills. So simple, yet so profoundly lovely! The wedding they attend on their first date also seems like the most perfect fairy tale wedding EVER and I kind of wish it had been mine. Mine was lovely, though, so I'm fine with it :) I'm just so in love with the idea of it all: a freshly mown field, garlands of roses marking the path, choosing a whimsical mask to wear, etc. *sigh. Someone do this wedding, please.
Let's talk about Lexy as the mask maker. Her livelihood is to let people be someone else temporarily. It's a reflection of her own self. We do not learn about it super early in the book while Paul's reminiscences of Lexy are veiled by his grief and blurred to think only of her good and lovely qualities, but Lexy suffered from a deep, harrowing depression and frequently wore a mask of happiness for the outside world to see. Lexy's brighter, sweeter, happier moments filled with joy are absolutely real, but her darker side, which she keeps at bay behind a mask, is downright disturbing at times. Her vivid dreamlife, too, reflects the two sides of her. In sleep and in consciousness, she can be drastically different.
Lexy's logic about meals on their week-long first date is so fun and unique. Did you, like me, wonder WHY you didn't go to Disney World on your first date? Or why you're not so spontaneous and fun? I wonder it about myself. I want this crazy, perfect date. It was in this chapter that I began to be able to picture, if ever so slightly, Steve Carell in the part of Paul, as was announced a few years ago but there is still no information about it! Ok. I did not want to say that was who was named in the part before you started reading because I would never have pictured him in a zillion years... but his expressive features would lend well to the surprises along the way. He plays depression well (Little Miss Sunshine! Dan in Real Life!) and he plays dumbfounded, humorous, and fun well (The Office!), so I can sort of see that taking shape. The Paul I picture is taller and his features less pronounced, but he probably does not exist. Here, in chapter eight, we also see how our loved ones can change our entire perceptions in the first paragraph about people with organ transplants having new tastes and other changes... and in that last, beautiful line, "There's nothing new I can say about Disney World, nothing you haven't already heard or seen for yourself. All I can tell you is that I was there with Lexy." The Disney World "It's a Small World" incident is also our first taster of Lexy's darker side, when we see what little things can set her off.
Friends, all of the above writing is from my first attempt to write this post... and only covers about the first sixty pages. I edited down a bit, but really, all of it seems so important and I would not mind discussing every page with you, but I know I need to work on shortening my posts. Allow me to write a bit more and then open it for discussion. If you have not read the book and plan to, I do not recommend reading on in this post as I will be posting spoilers.
On the characters themselves (and I am glad that Parkhurst focused primarily on three characters without adding a ton of names and faces into the mix... it helped enrich the important ones [Paul, Lexy, Lorelei] in my mind), we have the most vivid picture of Lexy. She is unique in that she feels everything so deeply. In fact, she basically exists to feel. From her refusal of Paul's proposal on the grounds that he did not know he loved her and feel it with the striking intensity of the discovery at every moment of every day, to her complete, almost sacrificial ruin and all of the fears and joys in between, we do not see a moment when her feelings are not intense. I like Lexy a lot. I like her creative spark and her bubbliness and can even relate some to her depression, but she makes herself unlikeable when she feels too much and takes things too personally. In that way, I can also relate. I take absolutely everything personally and I wish I had thicker skin. Lexy's fragility, her fears, and her sickness get the better of her and I feel (at least this time) much sadder for her than mad that she took her life and that of her child. Don't get me wrong. It sickens me. But I just feel so sad for her that she saw herself as too far beyond help to make it work... and honestly, to have her as a mother "as-is" would have been pretty frightening.
In Paul, we do not find a man with so much feeling as we see in Lexy's person, but we do find a person of great understanding, great capacity to forgive, and a thirst for some adventurousness and liveliness. On his own, Paul might seem a little bit blah, but he does hint that he's always had a curiosity for things mysterious when he speaks of his fascination with the Paul McCartney conspiracy in his childhood. Though Paul is not the theoretical mask-wearer that Lexy is, he also needs a sort of shield to wear to express himself. When Lexy and Paul wear the masks of each other, it shows us that she is not completely comfortable being open and has to think of creative ways to tell Paul even complimentary things sometimes, while Paul was born with a sort of impediment of his tongue and has never been able to verbally express himself (as in his first marriage to the woman who couldn't seem to shut up). Paul is also unique in the field of dog language acquisition. He sets himself apart from Wendell Hollis and the Cerberus Society in his love and caring for his dog and really for all dogs. He figures that the difference between Hollis and himself is that he would not use a knife to get a dog to speak. I, personally, tend to think there are more differences. Paul is not a raving sociopath, for one. Whatever his shortcomings, it is evident that Paul truly loves Lexy.
Lorelei is tough to pin down. She is comfort, joy, sorrow, and companionship rolled in one. She is hope and she's despair. She is a great help and also a devastating frustration to Paul. Her puppyhood was marred by the Cerberus Society's knives and her life with Lexy was one of contentment. She is the child Lexy and Paul never had. She misses Lexy fiercely and she did all that she could to prevent Lexy's death. I think that the saddest part of the book (for me, at least. For this time through) was when Paul realized that Lorelei tried to stop Lexy from climbing the tree in the first place... and that the Cerberus Society removed her larynx as a revenge on Paul. The innocent, how they suffer.
I could talk about a lot of things. I could talk about the horrors of Lexy's prom night, about the snake hair tattoo, about all of the death masks and Jennifer's in particular reflecting Lexy's own persona; I could discuss Lady Arabelle and Lexy's tendency to overreact, Dog J, Tam Lin, or the fact that there is a continuity issue in the doorbell of their house. But I won't write any more just now. I want to hear what YOU have to say. What did you like? What did you dislike? Did you try breaking down your name in the little way Paul breaks down names and words?
Loralee Violet
real, olive, tell, oral, eel, evil, oil, leer, rat, vile, tool, tile, troll, teal... Umm, I sure don't sound very nice broken down!
