The Language Nobody Speaks — Eugene Mirabelli

Eugene Mirabelli's novel, The Language Nobody Speaks, deciphers the language of our bodies, the grammar of passion. As Erin, the fiery young heroine of the novel, says, "Our bodies are another language, but no one speaks it. People just shout at each other and make noise and call it making love."

In this swift, cinematic story set in the early 1950s, we are drawn to the young lovers Erin and Bart. Their hunger for each other is simple, dramatic, and full of hope. But as Erin and Bart find themselves, even against their will, getting ever more deeply involved with an older married couple, the nature of erotic life begins to reveal itself as far richer and darker than they had imagined. The older couple, Lida and Hollis Lord, have an erotic life too, but theirs is stained with biography and with history, with all those things that an older married couple take with them wherever they go, even to bed.

Meeting quite literally by accident in Albany, New York, the two couples decide on the spur of the moment to visit the nearby resort town of Saratoga, where their increasing involvement leads them into further explorations at the Lords' isolated country house deep in the Berkshires. As the marriage of Lida, a sculptor, and Hollis, an art critic, unwinds in their long struggle to achieve meaning in their lives, young Erin and Bart spin closer and closer to knowledge of bodies and what they can lead us to do.

The Language Nobody Speaks is a rapid, turbulent, slyly humorous story about passion and sensuality and what we do to find meaning in life.