“Murphy Marshall uses her skills as a professional translator to decode everything left unsaid…Murphy Marshall’s intimate knowledge of language shines through…Murphy Marshall is a clear-eyed raconteuse, translating her early life faithfully while preserving the mysteries of her family’s first language  – silence.”

“Marshall’s memories still carry a certain pain, even with the passing of time. However, in her collective portrait of Ivy Lodge and those who lived within it, she creates a compassionate whole, narrated in the acquired language of forgiveness.”

“An insightful memoir…a sometimes painful, always poignant review of experiences that led to the writer and translator she is today.”

“With carefully crafted narrative, Linda Murphy Marshall has written the next great memoir about her painful and still mysterious childhood. A multi-linguist, Murphy Marshall applies her language skills to translate the dialogue that still echoes.”

“A comfortably white middle-class American family living in the Midwest: what could go wrong? Her memoir takes us deep into the dysfunction of one such family, “translates” parents’ actions into meaning.”

“Ivy Lodge is a brave, beautiful book about the unspoken language of family. Linda Murphy Marshall is unafraid of looking in the dark corners of her childhood home to find meaning, peace, and light.”

“Marshall’s accomplished, incisive memoir….[H]er considerable acumen as a prose stylist…[H]er portraits of family and accounts of conflicts …prove as striking as her descriptions of her beloved dolls, her father’s toy soldiers, and Ivy Lodge’s lofty gables…..[S]he proves a persuasive, perceptive analyst of the ‘Murphy dynamic’….a touching reckoning with a family, a home, and one’s place in both, in elegant prose.”

“A unique memoir triggered by the death of the author’s parents…an exciting recollection…a captivating journey into the author’s past…A deeply personal and honest account that captures the reader’s heart early on…This book is a masterpiece of social observation and self-scrutiny…Highly recommended.”

“Translation, at its essence, is the rendering of one into another. Murphy Marshall journeys deep into the labyrinth of memory, perception, and the shapeshifting forces of identity. A beautiful debut.”

“Ivy Lodge pulses with the dynamic of family dysfunction and isolation. [Her] exploration of the ostentatious house in which she grew up peels back the layers and brings [it] into brilliantly sharp focus.”

“Using translation of languages to search for the meaning of family relationships, [she] takes the readers on a journey of recollection to understand her parents. [A] story of self-discovery through the language of love, [i]t is an extraordinary book.”