The Dictionary of Animal Languages

by Heidi Sopinka

Overview

A thrillingly elegant yet raw evocation of a woman clawing her way to a creative life, inspired by the story of surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.

We grant men a right to solitude. Why can’t we do the same for women?

Born into a wealthy family in northern England and sent to boarding school to be educated by nuns, Ivory Frame rebels. She escapes to inter-war Paris, where she finds herself through art, and falls in with the most brilliantly bohemian set: the surrealists.

Torn between an intense love affair with a married Russian painter and her soaring ambition to create, Ivory’s life is violently interrupted by the Second World War. She flees from Europe, leaving behind her friends, her art, and her love.

Now over ninety, Ivory labours defiantly in the frozen north on her last, greatest work—a vast account of animal languages—alone except for her sharp research assistant, Skeet.

And then unexpected news from the past arrives: this magnificently fervent, complex woman is told that she has a grandchild, despite never having had a child of her own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947534919
Publisher:	Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Publication date:	09/03/2019
Edition description:	US edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

The Dictionary of Animal Languages is such a special book, suffused with an almost painterly intelligence. Sopinka's characters experience the world with an intensity we associate with children and visionaries. Watching them navigate the difficulties of the humdrum and the glamorous both is a distinctive, if unsettling, pleasure.”
—Rivka Galchen, author of American Innovations and Atmospheric Disturbances

“A stunning novel with quiet, prayerful prose to take your breath away. Sopinka flawlessly inhabits the rich inner world of her characters as if she could shed her own skin. Powerful in a soft way, like the static electricity before a storm.”
—Laura Graveline, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX

“With stunning prose, lavish details, deep wisdom, and emotional precision, reading this book is like falling in love—my interest in everything else was lost.”
—Claire Cameron, author of The Last Neanderthal

“Elements in the book build and shift, weaving together to create a vivid and powerfully human reckoning of a life, of aging and loss, of a century of conflict, and of the relationship between the natural and the industrial world.”
—Toronto Star

“made me push past my own expectations of literature”
—Nichole Perkins, The 2019 Tournament of Books

“[T]he language of Sopinka’s Dictionary…makes me feel I’m walking through lush dreamscapes from an art museum’s walls.”
—Rion Amilcar Scott, The 2019 Tournament of Books

“[R]ead it in two sittings, and completely enjoyed myself…the depth to which I could slip into Ivory’s point of view, the rhythms of her emotional responses, was a dealmaker for me. And the fact that the story’s way of evincing feeling and thought felt more evoked than stated—there was just so much in this novel that held me.
—Rosecrans Baldwin, The 2019 Tournament of Books

“Sopinka isn’t just a terrific writer, she’s a great thinker. Her writing has particular sway and grace when she writes about the natural world.”
—Christy Heron-Clark, The 2019 Tournament of Books

From the Publisher

A stunning novel with quiet, prayerful prose to take your breath away. Sopinka flawlessly inhabits the rich inner world of her characters as if she could shed her own skin. Powerful in a soft way, like the static electricity before a storm.”

Laura Graveline

[P]atient readers will find, as I did, that a bit of mystery about what exactly happened is just enough bait to keep them going until they’ve gotten to know Ivory so well that the last third or so of the book is emotionally devastating in the best way. This book is a powerful and brilliantly constructed story about loss, love, and communication of all types.”

Utah Valley University Library, Edelweiss - Annie Smith

With stunning prose, lavish details, deep wisdom, and emotional precision, reading this book is like falling in love—my interest in everything else was lost.”

Claire Cameron

‘Masterfully written in expressive prose, The Dictionary of Animal Languages is a tale of an artist’s life outlining love and loss and the surprises, both good and bad, that were thrown in her path. It is full of keen observations which are almost meditative, perhaps an indication of the artist’s ability to appreciate beauty and small details, especially in nature, which give continued meaning to life even when events turn tragic.’

Irish Examiner - Carina Mcnally

[A] brilliant book.”

In The Moment

[T]ransfixing.”

AnOther Magazine

Not only a dictionary of animal language, but also an atlas of the human heart, Heidi Sopinka's gorgeous debut novel maps the difficult territory between history and memory, love and loss.”

Johanna Skibsrud

A rich, painterly novel, a space where image and sound and the powers of the written word meet and mingle.”

Brixton Review of Books

The Dictionary of Animal Languages is such a special book, suffused with an almost painterly intelligence. Sopinka's characters experience the world with an intensity we associate with children and visionaries.”

Rivka Galchen

The Dictionary of Animal Languages shifts between past and present, across beautifully-rendered landscapes and soundscapes. In the foreground in sharp focus, an inner world, the story of a woman’s life, a life spent in rebellion from society, domesticity, and definition. Sensual and sensory, this is a story about the strength of the human spirit and it is about bodies, desire, and irrevocable loss, told in prose that is fresh, urgent and lyrical. A passionate and compelling debut.”

Anna Thomasson