Ape House by Sara Gruen

As a reading teacher for first through fourth graders, I am confronted daily with questionable substances, odors, peculiar looks, inappropriate actions and reactions, or something as simple as a singularly uttered word that immediately launch my five senses into cautionary alert.  I would like to think that I have, over the years, perfected the skill of diverting and avoiding such encounters.  However, try as I may and no matter how prepared I may be, one always finds a way to slip through the filter causing a raucous.  If only choosing a book were as predictable as sensing whether or not one of my students is up to no good. . .

I picked up Ape House by Sara Gruen from my library on a whim.  There it was sitting on the shelf, untouched, despite the usual congregation of avid book readers crowded and hovering over my shoulder in the New Release section.  While a book on bonobos (and let's be frank - monkeys) would not normally fascinate me, I truly loved Gruen's Water for Elephants and was willing to keep an open mind and give this one a try.  But how could I have missed the warning signs?  I should have clued into them from my fellow readers the way I pick up on those sneaky little details from my students.  There was a reason why no one was grabbing and clawing past me for this book in the library the way they do for others in a section for 14-day loaners.

I must admit before going any further:  I did not finish the book.  I had about 97 pages left to which I would have finished had I actually been enjoying it and had I not had to return it to the library.  I don't think those remaining 97 pages would have changed my opinion otherwise given that the first 200 really should have sucked me in.

I will also admit that the book did start out interestingly, giving me high hopes for its success.  It contained an element of suspense and action described in great detail.  A facility housing bonobos, who communicate through American Sign Language, is bombed leaving the bonobos without a home and their caretaker in serious medical condition.  We are immediately thrust into the suspense of determining "whodunnit."  Readers weave through a cast of characters who seemingly have a motive for the bombing.  But then in a cruel twist of literary maneuvering, we are told in a matter-of-fact, oh-by-the way manner who claims responsibility for this crime.  We were brought to such a high just to fall flat in a casual flutter on the page.  And then from there, the book never regained its momentum.  It spiraled into a dichotomy of the bonobo's human-like intelligence and their animalistic behaviors, more particularly their frequent and gratuitous sexual activities.  (Humans are animalistic too.  But for argument's sake, we'll call this a dichotomy, drawing a line between man and monkey.)  Unfortunately, the spiraling got a bit out of control for me, and I had to abandon ship.

Other good reads in this genre:
     *  Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
     *  The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein