Rating: ⭐⭐ Let me begin by telling you that I struggled with this book because of how much I wanted to like it. I appreciated its romantic ode to linguistics. I enjoyed the detailed, life-like characters. I was wowed by the outstanding and wildly impressive amount of research that went into this book. And I cheered for the righteous examination of history that calls imperialism in for grueling questioning.
But did I like the book? Truthfully, no. And it breaks my heart to admit that I actually didn't finish it.
Babel is a 560-page love letter to language itself and I can feel through the pages how much intellectual passion went into this book. I respect it immensely. Unfortunately, a love letter this extensive was something I just couldn't commit to.
[MINOR SPOILERS BELOW]
For me personally, I think the biggest problem was the pacing. The characters spend countless scenes walking around Oxford having wildly in-depth conversations about linguistical forefathers and their canon works which largely went over my, and likely most readers' heads. Besides showing how knowledgeable the characters (and obviously the author) are, these scenes did very little to reveal information or move the plot along. I would have had to do research just to understand their jokes, arguments and conversations. I'll be the first to say a book doesn't need to be fast-paced and action-oriented to be great. But this read consistently highbrow and I'd argue that's a huge cost to engagement when likely less than 1% of the audience are masters of language studies.
There was a treasonous heist plotline woven in there somewhere, but the events were so infrequent and largely uneventful that I felt like most of the book was just watching this group of friends go to class for 300 pages. I got about halfway through, and it felt like very little happened.
Robin and Remy are interesting characters, and I appreciated them as vehicles to demonstrate how being something as minor as 'vaguely foreign-looking' can create such an off-putting experience. I can definitely see how the author wanted to capture that discomfort and anger at being treated differently for no reason.
Final Thoughts
All in all, I appreciate what the author was trying to do with this book. There's a lot I can admire and give credit for and I wanted to like it. I even looked up the ending to see if it would unfold more if I just gave it time, but alas, it did not. Unfortunately, this book was terribly slow and overly erudite and I think those were its biggest hinderance.
