The Study of Animal Languages

December 15, 2018
Passion (or the lack of) among the academic elite is the subject of Stern's first novel, narrated by a philosophy professor who studies the nature of knowledge while clueless about how to lead his life.Love and academic politics at an unnamed Rhode Island college make for an uneasy marriage between recently tenured Ivan and his younger wife, Prue. Ivan, a self-proclaimed "fusty scholar" with no apparent friends and little sense of adventure or humor (except with Prue's 7-year-old niece, May, toward whom he is lovingly protective) adores Prue, an intellectual live wire popular with peers and students. He wonders, as will readers, what about him other than sex attracts Prue--probably not his binge-eating. Ivan's scholarship, which circles around the nature of belief and knowledge, has always been eclipsed by biolinguist Prue's scientific research into the nature of language. She has published 20 articles to his four and has received funding to start a center for ornithology at the college. Ivan has already sensed a tension growing between them before she announces that she has not yet decided whether to accept or reject an exciting six-month research offer from the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Worse, she doesn't tell him this while they're alone but rather in front of her encouraging friends. Ivan seems like a stick in the mud when he complains that her absence might have a negative effect on her upcoming tenure review. Then she gives a controversial lecture questioning the ethics of her own study of animal language. Horrified by the possible damage she's done to her career, Ivan is again unsupportive. In contrast, Prue's visiting father, Frank, leaps to her defense in disastrous fashion. Bipolar Frank's mental health is spiraling down because Ivan has not made Frank take his meds as Prue requested. Meanwhile, just as genuine professional success appears within reach, Ivan's misreading of the world around him causes him to mislead Prue in increasingly foolish and serious ways.Stern's brittle comedy of highfalutin intellectual theories evolves into a feeling portrait of a gifted man coming face to face with his limitations.

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February 1, 2019

DEBUT Things aren't going well for Ivan Link and his wife, Prue, who teach at a Rhode Island university. Ivan is an uptight philosophy professor whose obsession with logic almost rivals that of Star Trek's Mr. Spock. Young and vivacious, Prue is gaining acclaim for her research in biolinguistics, the study of the biology and evolution of language, and her career is beginning to eclipse Ivan's. To complicate matters, Prue's unstable father, Frank, comes to visit, and he's not taking his prescribed meds. When Prue gives a lecture proposing that the birds she studies might actually have their own language, it sets off a wave of controversy, and Frank is turning into a noisy animal-rights activist who soon gets into trouble, too. Meanwhile, Ivan's worry that Prue is interested in a visiting professor triggers his own midlife crisis. Can this marriage be saved? VERDICT Offering sympathetic characters and wry, rueful humor, debut novelist Stern proves to be an astute observer of both university politics and human behavior in an engaging debut that certainly raises thought-provoking questions while seldom becoming pedantic or ponderous. [See Prepub Alert, 8/16/18.]--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

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November 1, 2018
Stern's jittery, intelligent first novel takes place over a few fraught days during which a marriage that's already in trouble gets pushed to its breaking point. Depressed narrator Ivan is a 47-year-old philosophy professor on the slow track who has just earned tenure at the unnamed Rhode Island college at which he and his wife both teach. He's been married for six years to sparkling Prue, seven years his junior and a student of animal languages with some provocative ideas. She's on the brink of showy academic success, and she appears to be getting bored with staid Ivan. Their tenuous situation is threatened by the arrival of Prue's unbalanced father, Frank; Prue's delivery of a key speech that offends key faculty members; and a trip to the local aquarium that goes horribly wrong. Stern shows wry insight into the peculiar problems of academia, and the many discussions of communication, animal and human alike, add depth to her depictions of relationships in which the parties involved experience a distressing inability to communicate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)