Karen's Reviews> The Study of Animal Languages

Catching up…

Communication.

I believe, we can agree that communication is important to a marriage. And when it doesn’t exist within a marriage, the relationship will suffer.

In this case, this book emphasizes the crisis that exists within the relationship/marriage between Ivan and Prue because of their lack of communication.

And for university professors, especially the fact that Prue is in the emerging field of biolinguistics, which emphasizes the study of the evolution of language, how could she do so poorly with her own husband?

Even though it appears that they sustain their marriage adequately, Ivan does feel the distance. He knows that Prue talks more to his father-in-law, Frank, than to him.

So, what will help change things?

To gain insight, we as readers would need to feel connected to the characters. The author does her best to show the missteps in communication, and a fairly good job in developing Ivan and Frank’s characters.

But for this reader, Prue was hard to get close to and feel any sense of emotional closeness. And considering she was the one who was most responsible for the evolution of language, the limitations of interpersonal communication became too blatantly uncomfortable.

Making this story fall a bit flat for me.