Comparative Literature PhD Candidate Lindsay Stern has published her first novel

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February 18, 2019

“Stern was initially inspired to write The Study of Animal Languages while in college, when she entered her professor’s office and noticed that, although no one was speaking, the lie detector he kept in jest on the cabinet across from his desk was lighting up. The machine was picking up the melody of an apparently dishonest bird outside the window.

She was struck by our limited understanding of the meanings of these birdsongs—noises we tend to tune out as meaningless—and, by extension, our sometimes absurdly limited interpretations of our own language. The result is the story of Ivan and Prue, a married couple of professors—purported experts in communication—who cannot seem to communicate with one another.”

NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019 BY VANITY FAIR, SOUTHERN LIVING AND LITHUB

NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF FEBRUARY BY NYLON AND BUSTLE

“An unabashedly smart philosophical exploration and affecting psychological portrait of the strains of a marriage. Finely wrought, marvelously dramatic, riveting—a debut of stunning maturity.” 
—AYANA MATHIS, author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

“Lindsay Stern’s astute new novel…brilliantly captures the fragility of our emotional bonds, but also their ability to weather difficult terrain; there is dry humor here that is particularly welcome when taken on that darkest and sharpest of feelings: love.” 

NYLON

“[E]xplore[s] the limitations of speech and the ways in which these plague even our most intimate relationships. At a time when communication failures seem to have reached an all-time high…a reminder that even experts are human, and that we’re all just speaking one awfully confusing animal language.” 
—Vanity Fair

“A feeling portrait of a gifted man coming face to face with his limitations.” 
—Kirkus

“An intimate look at love, language, and their limits.” 
LITHUB 

“Thought-provoking…A taut, brainy tale that tracks the breakdown of an academic couple’s marriage while dissecting differences between language and communication, knowledge and truth, madness and inspiration.” 
—Publishers Weekly

“[An] intelligent first novel…The many discussions of communication, animal and human alike, add depth to [Stern’s] depictions of relationships.” 
—BOOKLIST 

“Artful and astute, funny and unnerving, The Study of Animal Languages brilliantly captures how easily we can mistake our impressions of the world, and the models we make of them, for the world itself. A knockout.”
PAUL HARDING, author of Tinkers

“An exuberant, wise, and darkly funny novel about love, talent, ambition, envy, and the bungled ways we try to connect and care for each other.” 
—Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest 

“A fascinating, original meditation on a human relationship and the non-human world from a very talented new writer. Quietly provocative.”
—JEFF VANDERMEER, author of The Southern Reach Trilogy

“Calls to mind the sly humor of Ishiguro and Nabokov. I loved this novel.” 
ELIZABETH MCKENZIE, author of The Portable Veblen

The rare novel of academia that has as much in its heart as it does on its mind. Remarkably lucid and eloquent, it highlights the difficulty of communication not only between species but between individuals. Reading it, you wonder whether, like the birds, we’re all just whistling tunes at each other, but also the opposite—whether, like us, the birds are sharing disquisitions of the soul.”
—KEVIN BROCKMEIER, author of The Brief History of the Dead and A Few Seconds of Radiant Films

“Written with fearless emotional precision…I’d say that this novel was an auspicious debut were it not for the fact that Stern seems to have appeared fully formed as a writer, alert to our weaknesses, our moral missteps and the ways in which the mind and the heart so often work at cross-purposes.” 
—MARISA SILVER, author of Mary Coin and Little Nothing

“Magnificent … Not only will The Study of Animal Languages make a reader’s mind race with fascinating thoughts, but it mesmerizes with addictive storytelling. Lindsay Stern has Nabokov’s trinity of attributes that distinguish the greatest novelists: storyteller, teacher, and enchanter.” 
—BENJAMIN HALE, author of The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
 
“With Ivan as our troubled (and troubling) guide, we ask where all our certainties have gone—those fond ideals we hope to find in love, marriage, and family. A hard question, and yet the beauty and solace of this wonderful novel is that everything is finally affirmed, line by line, in the music of Stern’s lean and lucid prose.” 
—CHARLES D’AMBROSIO, author of The Dead Fish Museum and Loitering

The Study of Animal Languages is a wise, meditative novel. Though both of the protagonists communicate expertly in their various fields, their dialogue with each other is hopelessly inarticulate, and Stern mines this (and numerous other minutia of love and marriage) with the sure-footed eloquence of an old hand.” 

—Read It Forward

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