SOURCE: "Truth Stutters," in The New York Times Book Review, June 18, 1989, p. 22.

In the following mixed review, Toynton compliments the literary style and characters of Dead Languages but charges that the author fails to clarify "what Jeremy's quest has been for or his indignation about."

If language itself can't be trusted, as the deconstructionists would have it, and if all our fumbling attempts at connection are doomed, as much of modern fiction suggests, what more appropriate metaphor can there be for our condition than a speech defect? "Stutterers are truth-tellers," says Jeremy Zorn, the protagonist of David Shields's new novel [Dead Languages]; "everyone else is lying." Yet Jeremy, a stutterer in a family of people for whom language, if nothing else, comes easily, wants desperately to be rid of his stammer, badge of honor though it may be. Much of the book is taken up with his anguish...