Ape House by Sara Gruen

Ape House
by Sara Gruen
$26.00

Hardcover: 320 pages

Publisher: Spiegel & Grau; 1 edition (September 7, 2010)

ISBN-10: 0385523211

ISBN-13: 978-0385523219

Annotation/Flashtalk:

As one, the bonobos turned to face the hallway. Isabel looked from face to face, puzzled. "What? What is it?" VISITOR, signed Bonzi. The rest of the apes remained motionless, their eyes trained on the door. "No, not a visitor. The visitors left," said Isabel.  The apes continued to stare down the hallway. Sam's hair rose until it stood on end, and a pricking like tiny spiders crept over Isabel's scalp…The rustling stopped, but all eyes—human and ape—remained on the hallway. Sam's nostrils flared. He turned to Isabel and signed urgently, VISITOR, SMOKE….In eight years of daily contact, she'd never seen the bonobos behave like this. Their adrenalin was contagious….The thunderous explosion blasted the door entirely out of its frame. As it carried her backward, she processed that she and the door were being propelled down the hall by a billowing, rolling wall of fire….Shadowy figures in black clothes and balaclavas swarmed in and spread out, strangely, frighteningly silent. Crowbars swung and glass flew, but the people didn't speak.

Summary:

Scientist Isabel Duncan has been raising a family of bonobo apes as part of the Great Ape Language Lab. These incredible apes have acquired the ability to communicate with humans via a computer and American Sign Language (ASL). They have become like family to Isabel. Late one night the apes sense “Bad Strangers” in the lab and start frantically signing to Isabel – and then the explosion! When Isabel wakes up in the hospital, she finds out her beloved apes have been sold and she fears for their safety.

Once out of the hospital, Isabel begins the task of trying to track down the apes. Then serendipitously she sees a billboard advertising “Ape House” a new show coming to television. The apes in the show are her apes from the Great Ape Language Lab.  The entire world seems transfixed by sight of these apes living in a house using a computer to order food, toys and furniture; everyone that is but Isabel. She is both elated that the world is able to see the beauty and intelligence of these apes and their ability to communicate; however, she is also afraid that whoever is behind the show is not taking proper care of the apes.

Still trying to get to the bottom of where the apes are, Isabel reaches out to a reporter, John Thigpen, who once visited the lab. The matriarchal ape had trusted John, so Isabel feels she can trust him to.  Together with some friends, Isabel has found some interesting information about who was behind the explosion and wants to use it to get her family of apes back and into a suitable environment.  One day, Sam, one of the apes identifies using ASL that one of his caregivers is the one of the “bad stranger” kidnappers. The show’s producers immediately shut the show down. Can Isabel and John still save the apes before they are sold to an animal experimentation lab?

Genre/Subgenre: Fiction/General

Evaluation: 3-stars.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge      
by Elizabeth Strout
$14.00

Paperback: 304 pages

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (September 30, 2008)

ISBN-10: 0812971833

ISBN-13: 978-0812971835

Annotation/Flashtalk:

 A collection of short stories about life in a small town in Crosby, Maine; the stories are strung together by the common thread of a local resident Olive Kitteridge.

Summary:

The novel is a collection of short stories all linked by the common thread of Olive Kitteridge, a retired school teacher, living in Crosby, Maine.  It is through these stories that we learn about the residents of Crosby, but we also learn about Olive. The novel delves into the Olive’s relationship with her marriage to her husband Henry, and later how she copes with his life after a stroke.  We find out about her strained relationship with her son Christopher, his first wife, and about the family he builds with his second wife and Olive’s grandchild, so far away from the home she and Henry built by hand for him. 

In the first chapter of the novel Olive warns us that as a pharmacist, Henry knows all of the town’s secrets and how important it is not to spread it as gossip; ironically, the novel feels a bit like we are doing just that, reading about the town’s gossip.  As the chapters pass, we learn there is trauma in the lives of the town’s people of Crosby, and tragedy in Olive’s personal life as well.  This is a novel not just about the human condition, but about life, sanity, insanity and redemption.

Genre/Subgenre: General Fiction/Short Stories/Pulitzer Prize Winner

Evaluation: 2-stars.

The Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle

The Tortilla Curtain
by T. C. Boyle
$15.00

Paperback: 355 pages

Publisher: Penguin Books; First PB Printing edition (September 1, 1996)

ISBN-10: 014023828X

ISBN-13: 978-0140238280

Annotation/Flashtalk:

Meet the Mossbachers, Delaney, Kyra, and Jordan.  They are healthy vegetarians and nature lovers who live in the LA suburbs.  Meet the Rincons, Candido and America. They are illegal immigrants eating out of trashcans and living in the valley behind the Mossbachers neighborhood. Only in Los Angeles can two families living in such close proximity live such different lives while trying to live the American Dream.

Summary:

 T.C Boyle brings to literature the long-held, yet timely still, debate about illegal immigration in Southern California.  Boyle contrasts the typical suburban lives of the American-born Mossbachers to that of the immigrant Rincons working to scrape by getting work where they can find it, living in a makeshift camp in the valley behind the Mossbachers’ suburban neighborhood and the depths of desperation they will go to even eat. 

Boyle uses walls and coyotes to symbolically further the debate of illegal immigration. He compares the effectiveness of walls for keeping out coyotes to that of the border keeping out illegal immigrants.  He also likens the coyotes’ desperation for survival to that of the illegal immigrants and their quest to survive doing every that is necessary to live and eat and survive in hopes of eventually getting the chance to live the American dream.

Much like the existing debate, there seems to be no easy answers and neighbors are pitted against neighbors in this controversial question.

NOTE: Seems like it would make a very good book discussion

Genre/Subgenre: General Fiction

Evaluation: 3-stars.