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Title: The Language of Paradise
Author: Barbara Klein Moss
Narrator: Piper Goodeve
Format: Unabridged
Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
Language: English
Release date: 04-09-15
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 3 votes
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Publisher's Summary:
Set in 19th-century New England, this exquisite novel tests a woman's love against her husband's utopian quest.
Sophy Hedge, the artistic daughter of the town's minister, falls in love with Gideon Birdsall, a driven theology student assisting her father with a Hebrew lexicon. Sophy is drawn to Gideon's intellect, passion, and spiritual nature while Gideon glimpses in her a free soul unbound by convention. Yet Gideon's restlessness after they wed worries Sophy, and she finds his friendship with Leander Solloway, the charismatic new schoolmaster, a cause for anxiety. As the men immerse themselves in Gideon's mystical theories, Sophy translates her fears into secret paintings.
When Sophy becomes pregnant, Gideon and Leander construct a faux Eden in a greenhouse as part of a daring experiment to discover the language of paradise - the tongue Adam spoke when he named the creatures of the Earth. Sophy must decide whether to live and paint in the world her husband has made or escape to save her child and herself.
Addressing the timeless issues of faith, art, and the elusive dream of perfection, Barbara Klein Moss has captured the fragility of human longing.
Members Reviews:
Stunning and affecting
Here, for those who love to enter and inhabit rich fictional worlds, is one of stunning beauty. Barbara Klein Moss takes us back to agrarian nineteenth-century New England, where, in distant Cambridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson is stirring up controversy with his theories of transcendentalism, and at home, Sophia Hedge, daughter of a scholar-clergyman, is passionately painting inexpert but vivid landscapes. Into her world comes one of her fatherâs students, the earnest Gideon Birdsall, who has set himself the task of discovering the language of Eden. Eagerly signing on to assist the Reverend Hedge with his Hebrew Lexicon, Gideon experiences his own transcendence through the beautiful letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Love ensues, and so much more.
Moss is a writer of astonishing ability, whose gorgeously crafted sentences toss off amazements of language and metaphor and are as fresh, alive, and original as Sophyâs paintings. I was pulled into the book completely, so that when the story began to twist and turn, I was unable to stop thinking aboutâand caring aboutâthe characters. They are all beautifully and memorably wrought, but Sophy is the stand-outâgrounded and complicated, she quickly takes root in the reader's heart. I also found the story entirely compelling, having hungered, like Gideon, to find a way--THE way--to the source of all spirit and knowledge. The Language of Paradise is a deeply affecting book that sends its characters in search of Eden and allows us to go along.
A Beautiful Book
I haven't written many Amazon book reviews, but I finished this book almost a month ago, and these characters, that are still living inside my head, compelled me to do so. I can still feel Sophy's repression and her yearning for freedom, Gideon's obsession to find that very first language, and Leander - ah Leander - he is still seducing me, as he seduced so many others. This book pulled me into the most beautiful fictional world I have visited in a long time.
Writing of uncommon beauty
I was immediately struck by the language of this book. Precise, flowing and often lyrical, it never sounds overworked or too clever.
