The Dictionary of Animal Languages

by Heidi Sopinka

A novel of love, longing, and art set in interwar Paris, The Dictionary of Animal Languages will appeal to readers of All the Light We Cannot See and The Disappeared.

Ivory Frame is a renowned artist. Now in her nineties, the famously reclusive painter remains devoted to her work. She has never married, never had a family, never had a child. So when a letter arrives disclosing that she has a granddaughter living in New York, her world is turned upside down and the past is brought painfully to life.
Disowned by her bourgeois family, the young Ivory had gone to interwar Paris to study art, and quickly found her true home among the avant-garde painters and poets who crowd the city's cafes. In fellow painter Tacita, she finds the sister she never had. In the Zoological Gardens, she finds a subject for her art capable of fascinating her endlessly. And in Lev, the brooding, haunted Russian emigre painter fleeing the Revolution and destined for greatness, she finds the love that will mark her life forever.
But she loses all this, and more, when the Second World War sweeps away the life she has only just discovered. In her grief, she turns to the project she had begun in Paris, and which will consume the rest of her life: a dictionary of animal languages. Part science, part art, the dictionary strives to transcribe the wordless yearning of animals, the lonely and love-laden cries that expect no response.
By nature solitary, Ivory withdraws fully into herself as she pursues her life's work. Until the discovery of one of Lev's paintings from 1940, inscribed to Ivory and now worth a fortune, brings to light a secret from her time in Paris that even Ivory could never guess. Now in her nineties, she is forced to acknowledge afresh all she has lost, and also to find meaning and beauty in a world defined by longing.
Masterfully written, and emotionally charged, The Dictionary of Animal Languages is about love and grief and art and the realization that, like tragedy, the best things in life arrive out of the blue.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Canada, France, Historical

310 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2018

About the author

Heidi Sopinka has worked as a bush cook in the Yukon, a travel writer in Southeast Asia, a helicopter pilot, a magazine editor, and is co-designer at Horses Atelier. She has written for The Paris Review, The Believer, Brick, and Lenny Letter. She is widely published as a journalist in Canada, where she won a national magazine award and was The Globe and Mail's environment columnist. The Dictionary of Animal Languages, her début novel, was chosen by AnOther magazine as “one of the six novels set to conquer 2018,” was a semi-finalist for The Morning News Tournament of Books Best Novels from 2018, was long-listed for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and has been translated into Polish and Dutch.

Reviews

[Marjorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ivory Frame has always been a rebellious one. She refuses to be subdued by the nuns at the boarding school her wealthy English parents have sent her to. She finds her way to Paris where she meets surrealists. She has a passionate love affair with a married Russian painter and becomes an artist herself. World War II is at its peak in Paris. When tragedy strikes, Ivory leaves Paris and tries to rebuild her life. She has always had an affinity with animals and sets out to record animal languages. Now aged 90, she is still working on her dictionary of animal languages when she’s told that she has a grandchild, which stuns her since she has no children.

This book deeply touched me in a way that few books have ever done. It was a very slow read for me as I wanted to savor each word. It’s poetic, it’s majestic and it’s absolutely stunning. I love how each chapter is entitled a different animal Ivory has studied and the way the author incorporates that animal and its characteristics into the chapter. Each chapter is a work of art in and of itself. Some of the chapters are short essays on life and love that are just gorgeous.

The book is loosely based on the life of surrealist Leonora Carrington. The author spent several days with Ms. Carrington in her home in Mexico City and interviewed her for “The Believer”. As soon as I finished the book, I had to read up on this artist. There were some similarities between Leonora Carrington and Ivory Frame but also some quite significant differences.

I’m saddened to see far too many negative reviews of this wonderful book. It’s true that it wouldn’t be for everyone and it isn’t a light read. There isn’t always a lot happening. But the author has a magnificent ability to get to the heart of her characters and brings Ivory’s world vividly to life in the mind of her readers. I hope this book receives the recognition it deserves in the literary world.

This is a book that I will treasure and love and will read again. Most highly recommended.

This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this Tournament of Books finalist, I was frequently reminded of a quote from Chekhov: "In life, one does not...declare one's passion at every fencepost, and one does not pour out profound thoughts in a constant flow. No."

I wish Sopinka had considered this. Her first novel is - in the words of her protagonist - "Jejune. Thrumming with purpose. Full of ideas, unfocused but alive." It is definitely loaded with interesting concepts and poetic turns of phrase. Were it not also overburdened with florid prose and the endless parade of weighted moments, however, it could have been so much more powerful. I couldn't escape the notion that the author is more in love with the language she has applied than what is behind the language; which is grandly ironic, given the story's premise.

I struggled a lot with first person narrator Ivory Frame. We approach Ivory at the end of her long and disappointing life. She carries with her nine decades of frustration and hurt. Her mother didn't like her, her brothers didn't understand her, her teachers didn't support her, and her fellow scientists didn't embrace her. She was the mistress, not the wife. She was the sidekick, not the friend. She was the Anglaise, not the Parisienne. She was a Surrealist at a time when Realism was supreme. She was the intuitive naturalist, not the law-and-order biologist. And all that would be fine if the reader cared about her. Others have; I tried but could not.

Sopinka doesn't incorporate enough self-respect into the character of Ivory to make her sympathetic. Sentiments like "The only way I know how to express myself is to offer him my body" and "There is no need for me to alter anything now, he is worth the torment" made it hard to tolerate her, let alone form any kind of bond. I felt like I was being asked to care more for this semi-fictional woman than she cared for herself and was unable to embrace that proposition. So Ivory Frame remained more of an avatar to me than a person and there was not enough warmth to attract me to the supposed fire in her belly.

2.5 stars rounded up for obvious talent and passion.

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the beginning of this novel, the protagonist, Ivory Frame, is a frail old woman who has just received word that she has a grand-daughter. This baffles Frame, because she has no children. This enigmatic information leads into a wonderful novel. The novel is advertised and framed as a love story but I found it more of a telling of Frame’s life. The narrative moves forward and back in time mid chapter, slowly filling in the tale of Ivory Frame. As a child, Frame is a solitary loner, constantly being expelled from school after school. Moving to Paris in the years between the great wars she finds company and what could be loosely described as friendship, with a group of artists and poets. This is where she meets Lev, a Russian artist, who she falls deeply in love with. After the conclusion of the Second World War, Ivory loses Lev and her passion for painting. Her passion and drive is now devoted to her study of the language of animals. This brings us back to the beginning of the novel where not only has she found out she has a grandchild but that the university is cutting her funding, effectively ending her dreams of completing “The Dictionary of Animal Languages”. I know that Heidi Sopinka has worked as a travel writer and journalist but I must say that this novel is beautifully written and at times quite poetic, filled with sentences such as, “ I remember feeling hardly more than a diagram of anatomy, skinless, strings of red and blue veins”. Or the profound “nine thousand years of protecting ourselves from nature, now we must protect nature from ourselves”. The structure of the narrative works very well, heightening the surprise at the ending. I enjoyed this novel very much.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thing of beauty. Incredible. I don't remember how this book came into my hands, but to think that it had sat on the shelf waiting for me. To read the book's description, its plot==about a 90 year old artist who collects sound, and her earlier life in Paris, the surrealists and the lives of the artists--is to imagine an entirely different book. The Dictionary of Animal Languages lives on the Rikki Ducornet/Jeanette Winterson end of beauty, deep in the consciousness of Ivory Frame, whose unique and poetic and verbally astonishing take on the world is fascinating at 20 or 90. It's not a watery dream life, but a crisp and insightful one, both wild and rational.

A ninety year old artist pusues a gigantic last project which records the sounds of animals and gives them visual form, so when they are gone, the languages will not be lost. Much of the book is devoted to sound and language, what is spoken, what is unspoken and the act of love which is hearing. There is a deep friendship with another artist, Ivory's first friend in the world, a fellow young woman at the art academy, a bricoleur--collector of found materials, something they share, the urge to collect--and translator. And a love affair with a larger than life painter, the only one strange enough to have captured the imagination of this strange young woman, to whom ironically she could not say what she felt, what she wanted. There's an astute and mysterious young assistant in the present--Skeet--who follows her to remote places to help her in her work. To him, she is the one with the mystery. There is a letter from an unknown granddaughter--she who had no children, unlocking a final mystery.

Yes, it is a mysterious book, but more in its silences. A controlled book, of what is said and what is held back. Yet so much other is generously, profusely given, you're confident that eventually you will be let in.

I have started listening differently after reading this book. Not to just hear the first impression of sound, but follow it through. It changes your awareness of the world.

Every paragraph--not every page, every paragraph--is studded with startlingly beautiful language, impressions and images, sensuality and deep insight. Sopinka thinks things through, she moves to a bigger meaning. Here's just a sample, chosen at random from all the checkmarks and underlines.

"He turns to me. His face the map of a lost country, like the ones Tacita [her great friend] finds hidden and beautiful in an invisible city that overlays he one we are in."

"Tacita and i walk to a bistro where she insists we must consume frites, and wine. We pass a faded poster fo the bullfights in Spain. You know the word matador in Spanish means killer, she says. Our shoes make little clicks on the cobblestones as we walk, the sound I have read whales make when meeting other whales, though usually they are silent."

"There is the absence of sound and visible objects in these tracts of land. All the evenings, across these violet-lapped fields from setting suns, I watch from the front door. Cold to the heat of them, emotions dulled by the simple act of time passing/ The darkness unrolls, the white-tufted moths fluttering in confined circles around the light. So much of making something out of life comes from the physical world, from really looking at everything. The smell after rain, trees illuminated in a storm, the sound of a screen door, the first star, all the things that compose your existence moment to moment. It forces you to live in the present, which is the only thing I've ever known stop the sinking fear of death."

"No sign of the tourists with their canvas hats, hauling around their ridiculous packs, and maps, and cameras, and plastic water bottles, as though they were going on safari and not to a French town with perfectly potable water."

The crispness and the beauty of this writing, the unique sensibility of its protagonist, will make this a book I will reread to remind myself what fiction can do.

[Jerrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened on audiobook to this one, but I’ve ordered a print copy to read. Will write a review after.

[Tonstant Weader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michelangelo would be baffled by today’s separation of art and science, whether he hid anatomical drawings in The Sistine Chapel or not. Ivory Frame, however, finds a way to unite art and science in studying and creating her “Dictionary of Animal Languages.” A story that jumps from the present to the past, Heidi Sopinka’s The Dictionary of Animal Languages tells the story of an artist/biologist loosely based on the life of Leonora Carrington. Like Carrington, Ivory falls deeply in love with an intense and talented artist in interwar France where modern and surreal art was blossoming. Her love was intense and all-consuming.

We begin, though, in the present, when Ivory is 90 years old and has just been informed she has a granddaughter, a tricky feat since she had no children. Through jumping back and forth we learn how such an improbably event could be possible, we learn how Ivory found her life’s work, creating a Diction of Animal Languages, and what she lost and gained in pursuit of her obsession.

One of the true things of life is that which is called dedication at forty and devotion at sixty is dotty at ninety. Even Ivory sometimes doubts herself. Her single-minded dedication to creating her dictionary has meant many sacrifices in her life, but she feels an urgency to capture the language before it is extinguished




I loved this book. The writing is poetic and powerful. There is such beauty in the prose I might call it luminous if I had not made the pledge to never use that cliche. You can google it. However, the language is full of imagery and energy, active and fresh.

This is a book that should not be read in a rush. It’s a book that should be savored slowly, with pauses to think about the ideas. Each chapter is named after an animal and it adds a bit of delight to look for the reason. Much of the book takes place in cold and frozen places, also speaking to my Arctic obsession.

This story is heartbreaking in many ways, though in some ways, the heartbreak is worth it. It also asks terrible questions such as whether we can love too much, if love can hold us back and make us lose ourselves. Can women reach their potential if they love too deeply. What makes life worthwhile? All these and many other themes are tackled in this marvelous book.

I received a copy of The Dictionary of Animal Languages from the publisher through a LibraryThing drawing.

The Dictionary of Animal Languages at Scribe Publications
Heidi Sopinka author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...

[Daniel Sevitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delight. I might never have come across this book had it not surfaced in the longlist for the Tournament of Books, but I couldn't be happier. Even as a first novel it arrives fully formed, gorgeously constructed and preternaturally poised. I have read books before which try to write about painting or music. Ivory Frame has dedicated her scientific career to understanding, capturing and preserving the most precious aspects of life in the same way that an artist or composer does. Her story is utterly heartbreaking but she survives, she lives and she works on discovering and recording a truth beyond sadness. I really loved this book and it has my highest possible recommendation.

[Alison Hardtmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ivory Frame is an elderly woman who has been working for decades on The Dictionary of Animal Languages, a compendium of the various noises animals make to communicate, from the clicking of insects to bird songs to the howls of wolves. Ivory has had an eventful life, attending art school in Paris, where she falls in love with another artist until the Second Word War drives them apart. She finds her true calling with the dictionary, and even though she is in her nineties, she continues to work on it.

This is an odd novel about a strong and determined woman. Heidi Sopinka tells the story from a very close first person, so much that there is no clear way to tell the difference between what Ivory is thinking and what she is saying aloud. The novel is set in two time frames; her life in France and her years after the war, as she finds her vocation. Sopinka's prose is not written with clarity in mind, there's a ornate and poetic feel to the writing that I found got in the way more than it gave greater illumination to the story. The best part of the novel was the character of Lev, a Tortured Artist with a truly fascinating and harrowing past in Ukraine and while he is the great love of Ivory's life, there are many hints that she's just the next girl in a sequence that exists somewhere below his art. There was a lot interesting going on and I wanted to like it more than I did. In the end, it was just too opaquely written and the central conflict shouldn't even exist, the solution being so obvious and predictable.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't believe how much difficulty I had finding a library print copy of this book. It became a personal challenge and I ended up requesting it be purchased. I read a combination of audio and print....I often switch back and forth if I have access to both. Narrator Elizabeth Proud was the perfect voice for a 92yo woman, Ivory Frame. She is a character you won't soon forget.

As Ivory approaches the end of her life, she is overwhelmed by the sense that so much of her life's work is left undone....work that became of outsized importance to her in rebuilding her personal identity after a consuming but ultimately tragic romantic relationship. I'm not sure how male readers will relate to this aspect of the novel as this subsumption of self to a partner seems to be more characteristic of women. Sopinka describes those feelings with breathtaking beauty and accuracy.

Just as an aside... I think Sopinka is a bit whimsical....not only is her protagonist called Ivory Frame but she dedicates the novel in part to a child named Winter Violet. I look forward to her next novel.

[Penny (Literary Hoarders) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh dear, oh dear. :-( This is NOT what I was expecting to both rate it or get from the reading experience. I had high, high hopes that this one was going to be right up my alley and be a fantastic reading experience.

While there were some beautiful and lyrical moments in the writing, this was a rather strange, dreamlike read sometimes, often quite confusing, and overwhelmingly slow and painfully dry. I don't mind slow and quiet reads at all, but this one was just too deep into its own head that I couldn't crack it.

Ivory Frame is a renowned artist. Now in her nineties, the famously reclusive painter remains devoted to her work. She has never married, never had a family, never had a child. So when a letter arrives disclosing that she has a granddaughter living in New York, her world is turned upside down and the past is brought painfully to life.

But see, the problem with that is - there really isn't a great deal of discussion of this grandchild, or how it turns her world upside down? Or at least to me I didn't read that - there is really very, very little mention of this grandchild. Overall, just not what I was expecting and the bursts of beautiful writing couldn't carry me through to rate it any higher than what I have. How disappointing!!

I received a copy of The Dictionary of Animal Languages from Penguin Random House Canada. Many thanks as always!

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful writing and an intriguing protagonist—a 92 year old who’s a former artist and current wildlife biologist. The diffuse story-telling as she wanders through her memories left me wanting something more linear.

[Brooke · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 58%. I can't find any desire to continue reading this book. The story, while it has moments of beautiful writing, is slow moving and a bit confusing due to the lack of quotation marks around dialogue and the various points in time that it jumps between. I'm also frustrated because the part of the description that hooked me into reading this book has barely been mentioned. It has such a beautiful cover (and an intriguing description), but this book is officially my first DNF of 2018.

[Katie Long · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid three stars. There is nothing really special here, but I enjoyed spending time with these characters. #TOB2019

[Tommi · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2.5) My hunch is that this would’ve been much more enjoyable if read physically, so do not be discouraged by my low rating at all if you’re interested in the novel. I wasn’t too keen on the audio narrator and I so wished I had the text with me in order to go back every now and then to keep track of all the levels of the story, so I ended up not always knowing who was talking and when and where. This is the kind of book I’m eager to hear other people talk about, for instance, during the Tournament of Books.

[Ruthiella · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have no regrets about reading A Dictionary of Animal Languages, but unfortunately, I did not enjoy the author’s writing style and I found the story to be overwrought and romanticized. Also, no speech marks. Often this does not bother me and I barely notice it but in this book I found it made a choppy narrative even more difficult to follow. Read for TOB 2019

[Sherri · Rating 3 out of 5]

After sitting on this for a few days, I'm giving this 3 stars for a solid, enjoyable book that didn't quite work for me.

This book is nearly impossible to rate, so I'll skip the star rating for now. I listened to it, but am planning to re-read in print. The writing is exquisite and the story is fascinating. Even though I loved the narrator, the experimental style and sheer number of words used to tell the story made it a bit more difficult to take as an audiobook. I recommend it if you're following the Tournament of Books because it will be fun to discuss. It's definitely not a "book club" type of read.

[Lulufrances · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now, I'm confused - how can a book be beautiful and boring at the same time? Oh the mystery.
The Dictionary of Animal Languages manages to do just that in all its glory.
Many gorgeous passages, a lot of confusing time-jumps, no clue honestly who some of the important side characters are (ok, mainly Skeet, and I think I can place him somewhat after finishing - but how annoying to read and not know for like 95% of the time who someone actually is in the bigger picture?), a feeling of it all being disjointed.
A quiet book. So much potential but it failed to deliver for the most part. What a shame.
i finished it last night and it already feels all hazy and far away.

[T.J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

One review of this book called the writing "glass sharp." Unfortunately, I didn't find the writing to be "glass clear." I wanted to love this book so much more than I did. But I found it frustrating from the first couple of pages, on and on through its dreamlike incoherence and narrative shifts through different times, countries, memories, voices with no quotation marks, lists and broken sentences to shape mood, poetic prose, very poetic but almost too poetic...... Pause. Deep breath.

Every sentence does not need to be poetic. I just think the author maybe tried to do too much.

Also, the whole "mystery of the granddaughter she never had" that is billed on the book flap as the catalyst to the plot is not really a thread throughout the book. You keep waiting and waiting for something about this granddaughter... That being said, the last 50 pages of the book punched me in the gut. Knocked the air right out of me. Can a person ever truly put aside the pain of the past? How many lives do we leave behind us? When do we try to stop forgetting and start remembering, bittersweetly?

It IS lush and gorgeous writing, for sure. 3.5 stars.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
Review to come.

[Margot · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This book requires patience and generosity. Frequent time shifts make it hard to follow and the layering of minutiae and scenes of small, exacting detail felt like writing from the 19th century, or a time when people had longer attention spans. Still, the language dazzles and piereces in places, and I cared enough about Ivory's story - her art, her scientific research, her love affairs - to keep going, to unravel and then weave back together all of the strands of her life.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t really know how to review The Dictionary of Animal Languages. It’s a very peculiar book. And, if I’m being totally honest, I’m not sure that I completely understand what this book is.

This isn’t the easiest book to read. Not one quotation mark is used throughout the story. Half the time I wasn’t sure if what I was reading was description or dialogue, especially considering that the author tends to weave dialogue throughout descriptive passages. I’ve encountered books that use alternative means to indicate dialogue, such as italics or hyphens, but, never have I read a book that uses nothing to highlight when a character is speaking. In my opinion, this stylistic choice significantly decreases the book’s readability. It takes you out of the story. As a reader, you’re constantly wondering what exactly it is you’re reading. Too much concentration is required in order to follow along with what’s going on.

Additionally, Heidi Sopinka has a very different writing style. Short sentences. Intellectual ruminations. At times, the book seems very philosophic and introspective. At other times, more artistic and poetic. It can even get quite scientific. Yet, while an abundance of big ideas on the meaning of life and love are explored through these various lenses, I could never fully grasp what was being said. There was just too much being said in too many different ways. Quite honestly, having the characters constantly reflect on such “profound” ideas came across as a bit pretentious. It’s a book where it seems like a whole lot is said and done, yet at the same time, nothing really happens.

To make matters worse, the book isn’t written chronologically. Sometimes you see the main character, Ivory Frame, in the present day as a scientist, sometimes when she’s a young artist, at other times when she’s a heartbroken woman. It’s a constant back and forth, with no warning as to what time frame you’re going to. There are too many shifts in the plot to form a cohesive story. I couldn’t quite grasp where Sopinka was going in regards to turning Ivory from an artist into a scientist who studies the communication of animals. I know it has to do with who Ivory was as a little girl, and who she was as a burgeoning artist, yet, it just didn’t work for me.

* I received a copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe the main characters in this story Ivory and Lev were inspired by Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst both part of the surrealist art movement. Also living through troubled aftermath of warring times. A very creative internal and external life imagined by the author. Which I understand understates some of this groups life experiences. Could it be that I am full on boring. (And very happy to be so.) A lot of Ivory’s fascination with nature and wild creatures I could relate to, such a relaxing place to inhabit but such a terrible anxiety for our species, our human cruelty, our not seeing species or relegating them to some area of our minds whereby we can do anything we like to them. Yes they are disappearing. Ivory’s nickname ‘I’ confused me for a bit. It was a very specialized niche of friends she established, and a relief she made some. I loved her complete immersion with sound, with animal languages and just what they were trying to tell us. So portentious, a bit crazy, more a hugely creative scientifically enquiring mind. Bit disturbed genius. Still the vast unknown. Ivory’s intense relationships assisted to drive this story along. The period in time after war with all its uncertainties, the displacement of millions, mixed ethnicities, hidden pasts. Lots of mysteries, mistrust and subterfuge. Well it’s faint. What I found made the novel was Heidi Sopinkas choice of character(s). Did I already just say that ? The intimate voice mainly that of Ivory, her inner thought processes and observations of her environment in arrays of layers of all the senses. Things are hidden as she is such a solitary character, on the outermost edges and she does not pay attention to the sorts of things a mainstream young woman might. So the reader also then is only partially aware of what might be very obvious to others. So it’s kind of insular. I might have inadvertently repeated myself here. It’s quite a read to get your head around.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5. I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher via the Goodreads giveaway

"The Dictionary of Animal Languages" tells the story of our main character, Ivory Frame, from her childhood to her life in Paris up until WWII, and her focus on her life's work with animals after.

This story is told in a non-linear format, changing from Ivory's present-day life at the age of ninety two, to various points in her past such as early childhood and her love story in Paris. I found this format confusing, as the author rarely set the stage for when certain events were taking place. For example, when Ivory spends time in the Yukon and during the scene where she is being interviewed, I had a hard time understanding where that fit in her timeline from Paris-present.

Furthermore, I found the main story (Ivory and Lev) to be disappointing. I never felt that we were given the change to connect with Ivory, and Lev wasn't a character that I wanted to spend a lot of time with considering his wife, his dancer and Ivory's ability to overlook both.

While this book is very lyrical and well written, I found the story line confusing and the main character to be lacking and I was unable to develop a connection to the book. Readers who are greater fans of historical fiction may enjoy this book; however, there are also many books on similar subjects that do a better job at capturing interest.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ill-fated love. Art. War. Madness. Sadness. It should have been enough to build a book, but this book just sits there, not going anywhere, not achieving anything. In the opening pages, Ivory Frame, in her 90’s, learns that she has a granddaughter - even though she never had a child. We never learn much more about the daughter or granddaughter. Most of the book just goes on and on about Ivory pining for the man she loved during The War, the man that she knew she could never really be hers. At least we learn a little more about him than we do about the daughter or granddaughter, but not that much. And what about the dictionary of animal languages? Science project? Art? We never really know what it’s all about, just that it has consumed Ivory’s entire life. 2 1/2 stars.

[Virginia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful writing and I loved the characters, but this was one of the most difficult books I've ever picked up. The conversations, which carry a large part of the plot, are almost impossible to follow and I never knew exactly who was talking. I'm not dim but this was an enormous stretch for me. To be honest I didn't make it all the way through but am willing to pick it up again in future, although I'd really rather wait for the movie.

[Erin Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh my goodness, where do I begin???. This book is so disjointed and and confusing I cannot give it a thumbs up on any level. The missing "quotation" marks throughout totally left me the dark as to who the narrator was at the moment. UGH!. I've read other books that used this system, however this one is awful. The synopses of the novel that was included as printed material included as an early reviewer told me basically the whole story... why write more??? The only thing I found that I could follow was the narrative of Lev, when he recalls his capture, imprisonment and escape. I think that was three or four pages. This tale, if it is that, is too rambling and existential for me, not recommended. Sorely disappointed in what I thought would be an interesting read. The author should revert to poetry ... or at least a diary. Sorry, cannot recommend.

[Ehrrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe 4.5, but I'm feeling generous, and I already miss Ivory.

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

More so than most novels, I think opinions on this one will depend upon the reader's reaction to the author's writing style. If the reader enjoys it, it will be given descriptors like poetic, lyrical, dreamlike, beautiful. If not, it will be florid, overbearing, incoherent, choppy. Here's a sample:

I think of this place. Full of its imagery. The poetics. The corners of antiquity. The disquiet. As though the city was invented for Tacita. And here I am looking for things elsewhere, like the crows that fly over it. It's ridiculous. Like saying yellow is the colour of that red painting. Tacita says we need relatively. How else can we measure? It is not new, the idea of the thing farthest away being the most desired. With longing there is velocity.

Keep in mind this style goes on for 300 pages...

If one enjoys the style, the weaknesses of the book can understandably be overlooked. The titular project of the book's protagonist - the dictionary of animal languages - which is her overriding obsession for 50 years of life, is pretty sketchily described. How do you keep notebooks of animal vocalizations? How do you describe them? How are these deciphered and organized into some sort of dictionary? Chapters of the book are named for animals and given italicized lines from what could be the notebooks, but often they focus on appearances rather than "languages", as in:

Dolphin. Ceta cea. 21" length of symphysis... 5'3" of ramus... 16'6" end of muzzle to palatal notch... 13'10" to preorbital notch... 85 teeth incurved, fang compressed... Habitat, unknown. Creates rings out of blow hole or creates water vortex ring and blows air in.

Well, ok, but if that's indicative of the notebooks, I understand why the museum conservatory, which is presented as the bad guys in the novel for cutting funding and other sins (after decades of funding her research! That's gratitude), doesn't really know what to do with this.

Ivory, our protagonist, had a serious flame as a young woman, a painter named Lev. He's a dark, mysterious, charismatic Russian. Women find him irresistible, being a dark mysterious Russian and all. If I recall correctly, he's even compared to Rasputin. We don't learn too much about Lev's character or inner world, or why he's so into her, but he's a dark star around which Ivory feels powerless not to orbit. The relationship feels unconvincing, certainly the depths of intensity it reaches feel unconvincing, even if it is partly during wartime, which can provide intensity where it wouldn't otherwise exist.

The front cover flap teases a shocking revelation: a grandchild! Despite Ivory "never having had a child of her own." First, this is pretty irrelevant to the novel. A letter informing Ivory of the grandchild is brought up on the first few pages, then ignored until close to the novel's end, and the grandchild's existence really doesn't matter, definitely not to a measure justifying the tease. Secondly, this is seriously problematic. We learn finally that Ivory did indeed give birth to a child, but she was told it died when in fact the child was given for adoption, evidently a policy for births to unmarried women at this hospital at the time. Does this mean Ivory really "never had a child"? Obviously she did. Does the qualifier "of her own" rescue the claim of the front cover flap? I don't think I'm inclined to think so; it's a lie, essentially. I don't like book descriptions lying to me.

If the novel's writing style doesn't work for you, and the book's plot is frustrating, there isn't a whole lot here to enjoy.

[Nofar Spalter · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Dictionary of Animal Languages" is a technically difficult novel to read: the language is dense, the plot isn't linear and at least at first it takes time to figure out who is talking, what's going on, and in which timeline (one of the several past ones, or the present) you are. It doesn't help that dialog isn't delineated with quotation marks and often it isn't clear who is talking, or whether they are talking or you are in their mind. If it wasn't for the tournament I would have probably not have bothered with this book after wading through the first 2-3 chapters. 

Ivory's life is complicated and fascinating, but difficult to construct when broken up into non consecutive pieces and portrayed as it is. The characters and settings are very good (vivacious and interesting), and if the story was reconstructed in a more linear fashion it would be "unputdownable". Sopinka is trying to show Ivory's life in bursts, not unlike field recordings that you listen to in the lab and try to make sense of, but it really is too much effort for the ending result.

The novel is lyrical and touches on a lot of interesting themes (women's roles and choices in the worlds of art and science, for example) , but the first third of it moves like thick pudding through a fine sieve. If you get through that, the last half is so much more interesting and rewarding than the first one, although it rushes through some plot points that feel like they shouldn't be rushed through. There are too many coincidences in the plot (get captured and escape from prison camps much?), there are familial ties that are severed with no explanation or time to mourn (what happened to her brothers? Did Lev really breeze through retelling his brother's death with not even a moment's pause?) , and then there is the peculiar animal languages dictionary that is constantly evoked but never really explained to the reader, and you wonder why.

In short, this is a book in need of a more adept writer or a much stricter editor. The bones that are there are interesting enough to merit wading through the first part if you're interested in contemporary fiction. There's something there that with time and experience could probably make for a masterpiece some day.

[Nell Beaudry McLachlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breathtaking prose, a charming and relatable main character in Ivory Frame, and a tenderly drawn, realistic love story that ends in a way that the reader won't come to expect from this type of novel. Heidi Sopinka is a generous author, giving the reader delicious vocabulary to savour, with sentences that sit like a pearl in your mouth, all while hinting at a plot that has a resolution one can't come close to expecting - in fact, there's little resolution at all. The Dictionary of Animal Languages works within a framework that has no obvious beginning or ending in order to tell a story that doesn't quite stand up on its own, and the two work perfectly together to provide a very non-cliched book. I was absolutely delighted by it, but disappointed in the cover - I felt it was very misleading, and almost passed over it because I thought it looked like just another schlocky romance set in World War II. I'm glad I picked it up, because it was phenomenal. Sopinka has a masterful command of language, and a gentle understanding of the breadth of the human experience.