The Dictionary of Animal Languages
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
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 émigré 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.
Heidi Sopinka
Heidi Sopinka is the author of The Dictionary of Animal Languages, which was shortlisted for the Kobo Writing Emerging Writer Prize, and longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. A former environment columnist at The Globe and Mail, she is co-founder and co-designer at Horses Atelier. Her writing has won a national magazine award and has appeared in The Paris Review, The Believer, Brick, and Lit Hub, and has been anthologised in Art Essays. She lives in Toronto.
Read more from Heidi Sopinka
The Dictionary of Animal Languages Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Utopia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Dictionary of Animal Languages
Related ebooks
Nameless Lake Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEveryone Lives Here Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaking Up Lost Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArcheophonics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Preservation of a Vanishing World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Private Parts of Women: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInvisible: Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Middle Ground: Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Child Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fifth Day . . . and Other Bitesize Prose Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCall Me Home Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTurning Points Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Fade of Widows Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Luskville Reductions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFeather Stone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Waste Land Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Whole Elephant Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Man with a Rake Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Tide Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Hard Gold Thread Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDesert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lesley Glaister Collection Volume Three: The Private Parts of Women, Partial Eclipse, and Now You See Me Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClass Clown Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpine: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlaying in the Street Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Thirty Names of Night: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shadow of a Cloud but No Cloud Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Storyteller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Live Streaming Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpring Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Historical Fiction For You
The House of Eve Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hallowe'en Party: Inspiration for the 20th Century Studios Major Motion Picture A Haunting in Venice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lady Tan's Circle of Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden (Original Classic Edition) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Tender Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Invisible Hour: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Yellow Wife: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The House Is on Fire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sisters Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Magic Lessons: The Prequel to Practical Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rules of Magic: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Second Life of Mirielle West: A Haunting Historical Novel Perfect for Book Clubs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Euphoria Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I, Claudius Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Red Tent - 20th Anniversary Edition: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Journals of Sacajewea: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kitchen House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hang the Moon: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Island of Sea Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Light Between Oceans: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sold on a Monday: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Magic: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Dictionary of Animal Languages
0 ratings0 reviews