Ape House by Sara Gruen
Allen & Unwin $37.99
Bonobos. They share 98.7 per cent of our DNA. They're slimmer and lankier than chimpanzees. They can be taught to use sign language. They're vocal, sociable, and "extremely amorous". They even (ahem) use the missionary position.
They're the real heroes/heroines of Gruen's intriguing, irritating second novel.
The story starts at a Kansas animal behaviour laboratory, where bonobo language and behaviour are being studied, where we see the apes play gorilla-mask games with visitors, sulk if someone takes their bouncy ball, watch Tarzan on TV, enjoy a good caramel macchiato.
Events are told through the battered or bewildered eyes of dedicated linguistic scientist Isabel Duncan and disillusioned journalist John Thigpen (memo to publishers: it would be quite nice to have a buoyant, fulfilled journalist in fiction for a change).
Very early on, the lab is bombed by a militant animal liberation group. Isabel is badly injured. The research project collapses. The bonobos are sold to a reality TV show, whose nasty host hopes to make millions by screening the apes' sexual sprightliness. And that's just the start of his murky, malevolent machinations.
As I say, the bonobos rule in this story.
Right from the first page, where primate language is favourably compared with that of Britney Spears, Gruen can't stop telling us what makes them such "sentient, intelligent beings".
It's an admirable message, but it's accompanied by relentless moralising and by a simplistic division of human characters into sympathisers (brave, good, sensitive, sometimes damaged) and exploiters (brutal, dishonest, mercenary, usually warped) that erodes both plot and plausibility.
Gruen is outstanding with her bonobos, as she apparently was with her pachyderms in Water For Elephants. She's far less successful with her people. Their back stories and side issues distract and dilute. (John's convoluted relationship with his flaky novelist wife, whose second manuscript has been rejected by 129 agents, is especially endless). Their behaviour is often contrived and cartoonish.
Events wind along via green hair, possible paternity, corruption in the Congo and nightmarish in-laws towards a gamut of happy endings. Lessons from and about the bonobos keep coming until the last page.
You'll be educated and exasperated in unequal measures. Accept the flawless intentions, try to ignore the flawed execution.
David Hill is a Taranaki writer.
