Last Language
About This Book
Angela's life comes apart within a few months of her husband's death in 2001. Harvard expels her from its graduate linguistics program, and she then miscarries. Unsteady and emotionally exposed, with old wounds she has never confronted, she moves with her four-year-old son into her mother's home. Angela was schooled to believe that spoken language is the foundation on which thought rests, and she takes a poorly paid position at the Center, a young organization that tests an experimental therapy for nonspeaking people with motor impairments. There she works closely with Sam, a twenty-eight-year-old who has spent most of his life confined to his bedroom. Sam adapts quickly to the technology, and so does Angela, whose once abstract fascination with language takes on real life through her work with him. She grows intensely drawn to Sam, and their relationship becomes intimate. When Sam's family learns of the relationship, they take action and file charges. Angela narrates the story from prison in an unrepentant plea that carries readers inside her mind as she sets aside everything else in pursuit of a deeper understanding of language and humanity. As the only narrator, she keeps the reader uncertain, and a Nabokovian hall of mirrors takes shape as she sinks further into obsession. The novel probes the basis of what it means to be human. The publisher describes its author as one of the most acclaimed contemporary writers.
ISBN: 9781639551088
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