Ape House by Sara Gruen

Read for: Canadian Book Challenge 4

John Thigpen, a journalist, is fresh off a visit to the Great Ape Language Lab when he hears that the lab has been bombed, one of the scientists seriously injured, and the apes sold off in secret.  Isabel Duncan, the injured scientist, has made this project her life’s work and considers the apes to be family.  When she is sufficiently recovered from her injuries she is devastated to find out about the disappearance of the apes.  She does everything she can to find out what has happened to them or who is responsible for the bombing but finds nothing, until she sees the ads for a new reality tv show.  All of the apes are being recorded and broadcast around the clock.  The television show becomes the latest big story and John Thigpen is sent to get the story.  Isabel also heads to the site of the taping to try and protect her apes and hopefully get them back.

I really enjoyed this book for the most part.  The main story was entertaining, thought provoking and well written.  What bothered me were the sub plots.  Actually just one sub plot in particular.  John and his wife were having some issues that seemed unrelated to the rest of the novel and detracted from the story.  Also, John got involved in some weirdness that came out of left field and didn’t work in the flow of the story.  He also befriended some strippers that lived in the hotel he was staying in and while I can see where Gruen was trying to go with that relationship it just didn’t seem realistic.

Other than those small details though, I loved the book.  My favourite was reading about the apes and their interaction with each other and the humans in the book.  It was so interesting.  In the Author’s Note at the end of the book Gruen says that she was able to meet with the apes at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa and many of the portions of the book that dealt with the apes were based on that experience.   She also says that most of the ape-human interactions in the book are based on actual conversations with great apes.  This book and Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel (which I reviewed just last week) have educated me and made me very interested in learning more about our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

The novel also got me thinking a lot more about animal testing.  This is something that I don’t normally think about but both Ape House and Half Brother are about the morality of using animals for testing drugs or in the entertainment industry.  My eyes were certainly opened when reading about the conditions that the animals are subjected to.  These issues are things I don’t know enough about to comment on but it’s definitely something I’d like to learn more about.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and it gave me a lot to think about.