“ZIRA: What will he find out there, doctor?
DR. ZAIUS: His destiny.”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns  (JUN 26, 2011)

Consider the big questions. For instance, what does language afford us? Is self-consciousness and all it implies (self-reflection, guilt, joy…) embedded in language, daresay a function of language? Why do we create art? Nature or nurture, what shapes us? How is love possible? Where does rage come from? Cruelty? What are we to make of the animals, those we imprison, those we consume, the beasts we love as companions? What, indeed, does it mean to be a human being and can it, whatever it might mean, be fully realized? Now, take these questions and a bunch more just like them, and wrap them up in a narrative so unique and compelling, so rich as to bring transparency to the questions. Then shape the story around a unique voice that ranges from the mindlessly inarticulate to the Mensian complex. If you can imagine experiencing all that, you have a sense of what this book affords the adventurous reader.

This is the story of Bruno Littlemore, chimpanzee extraordinaire. Rather, more properly, as the first-person narrator tells us, this book “contains the memoirs of Bruno Littlemore, as dictated to Gwendolyn Gupta between September 9, 2007 and August 8, 2008, at the Zastrow National Primate Research Center, Eastman, GA 31024.” And what a memoir it is.

Bruno, we are informed, grew up in the Primate House of the Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago. He was the scion of Fanny, who was raised in the zoo, and Rotpeter, a chimp who had been rescued from the Congo jungle after watching “his mother and father murdered and subsequently devoured.” As a small chimp, Bruno was delivered to a the University of Chicago’s behavioral primatologist, Dr. Lydia Littlemore. He recalls the meeting early in the book. “I will begin with my first significant memory, which is the first time I met Lydia. I was still a child at the time. I was about six years old. She and I immediately developed a rapport. She picked me up and held me, kissed my head, played with my rubbery little hands, and I wrapped my arms around her neck, gripped her fingers, put strands of her hair in my mouth, and she laughed. Maybe I had already fallen in love with her, and the only way I knew to express it was by sucking on her hair.”

He quickly grasps the complexity of evolved consciousness. “I am Bruno,” he declares. “I am an animal with a human tongue, a human brain, and human desires, the most human among them to be more than what I am.” And yes, as he states, he falls in love with his keeper. Does that imply what we think it does? Well, jumping ahead, yes, they have sex, assuming your mind raced there. Bruno takes evolutionary steps, learns language, creates art, walks erect and of course has sex. This is a coming-of-age memoir, ergo sex is discovered. Inter-species relations might put some readers off, understandably. However, in the context of understanding the measure of humanness it cannot be avoided. Hale manages this territory with aplomb. But, not to get derailed, there is love here too. Lydia removes Bruno from the captors and takes him home to further her research. He has demonstrated a capacity for intelligence beyond the norm and she is convinced he is the subject from which careers are launched. That is, before she is as smitten by him as he is by her. “Of course I was in love for all the vainest and greediest reasons,” writes Bruno, several years later. “I climbed down from that tree to spend the rest of my life running from the yawning darkness of animal terror toward the light of fire stolen from the gods, and like you, I remain in a state of constant pursuit, never quite escaping the darkness nor ever reaching the light.” This is no ordinary chimp obviously.

Bruno finds creative relief in art. He paints. He exhibits. He becomes known. But as enlightened as Bruno is, he cannot repress his more beastly urges. His outbreaks eventually cost Lydia her job. Their relationship breaks into the news and they are scandalized. They escape to the compound of a wealthy animal-rights couple in Colorado. Eventually they return to Chicago where Lydia falls ill. Bruno, left to his own devices, plunges solo into the world of humanity. He travels to New York, is befriended by Leon, a Falstafian character of brilliant, yet dubious talents. Together they produce Shakespeare’s Tempest. But circumstances intrude and Bruno must escape, returning to Chicago. Picaresque as his journeys might be, the weight of his adventures at times seems unwieldy, as if they might all fall in upon themselves, so dense and allusion-filled they seem.

Returned to Chicago, Bruno’s last act of unbridled rage occurs when he discovers that his primate sibling, Céleste, is being subjected to animal experimentation. He commits murder and lands in jail. Ironically, it is his voice, his command of language and story telling which, like Scheherazade, saves him. He is an animal, after all, and should be “put down.” But he saves himself–and his story. Nine years after committing the crime, 24 years old and hairless, his face surgically altered (he wanted a human nose), he dictates his memoir.

This book is compelling every way you consider it. It is rich in philosophy, ideas, notions, questions and preponderances. Yet, as practiced in the best of the literary tradition (yes, this book, from Dostoevsky to Nabokov, stands tall), the ideas are carried along on a narrative stream which twisting and turning is wildly entertaining. The writing is gin-clear and elegant. (You’ll want to have a dictionary handy.) This is a first novel. What a debut for Mr. Hale, a truly wonderful and heretofore unknown author.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 50 readers
PUBLISHER:	Twelve; First Edition edition (February 2, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Benjamin Hale
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:The Descent of Manby Kevin DesingerLove in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet

Bibliography:

• The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (February 2011)

“Every woman remembers her first period—where and when it happened, who, if anyone, she told, and even what she was wearing. And yet, despite our vivid memories of this momentous occasion, almost no one talks about it. Even fewer people write about it.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Poornima Apte (APR 23, 2009)

No matter where she lives in the world, a girl greets her first period with a mixture of dismay, joy, relief and apprehension. Even if it is an essential rite of passage for all women, the event is often shrouded in embarrassment and talk about periods is shared in hushed whispers. Until now. An amazingly simple idea—essays about first periods from a variety of women—forms the basis of My Little Red Book edited by young Rachel Kauder Nalebuff who will soon start her undergraduate studies at Yale.

It is amazing how most women remember at least some vivid details about their first period. There are some general themes that seem to cover most of the ground: a few think they are dying, some girls are eager to achieve this milestone especially if they are the last ones among their peers to get there, and yet others totally don’t know what’s happening. In one hilarious essay, Barclay Rachael Gang gets hers on Thanksgiving Day. She has been whipping up some cranberry sauce that day and suspects she just got some of it on her panties by mistake.

Nalebuff does a great job choosing a diverse cross-section of women—young and old, and across many cultures to show how the experience is different for many women. The simplicity and matter-of-factness with which most of these essays are written belie some startling details. There’s a young Jewish girl who escapes being strip-searched by the Nazis because of her first period. A Kenyan woman details missing school for a week every month because of a lack of sanitary supplies. Then there is Shobha Sharma, an Indian girl who, according to custom, was isolated from other family members when her period arrived. As appalling as the information in these particular essays are, the reader is struck by how casually the authors relay these facts—it’s almost as if, decades later, these women have come to make peace with the way things were for them.

What has changed over the years is how women who went through an embarrassing first experience now choose to empower their daughters with more knowledge and preparation. As easy as it would be to make this book a primer about mothering styles, I also think it would be unfair to do so. As My Little Red Book shows, each woman tries her best, given all her baggage (cultural or otherwise) to make it easy for generations that follow. You can be over-eager as Nancy Gruver and Joe Kelly were—read their essay “Progressive Parenting,” or stumble along and hope you did right by your daughter.

As good as the essays in My Little Red Book themselves are, the book deserves an equal measure of praise for bringing a fuzzy and embarrassing subject to the forefront and letting women share their stories. The fascination this book held for my 14-year-old daughter was even greater than it did for me. My younger daughter, who is almost 12, wanted to have nothing to do with the book. She might, some day.

As an aside, special kudos go to Twelve Books—a publishing division of Hachette Book Groups—that has sought out interesting topics and consistently turned them into good reads. I have enjoyed many of their books including The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, tremendously.

As for this one, it is telling that Nalebuff uses the phrase “Rorschach blot” to describe the growing patch that made up her first period. In a sense, the reactions girls show to this milestone is perhaps indicative of their varied personalities.

My Little Red Book lets women of all ages know that they are not alone. Every one of us gets it and goes through its attendant pains and embarrassments. In one of the essays, A Coup at the Napkin Dispenser, contributor Linda Lindroth, compares getting her first period to her friend’s vacation in Cuba witnessing Fidel Castro grabbing the reins of power in 1960. “My friend’s vacation story was far more dramatic than mine—hers as a witness to history while mine was elemental and inevitable,” Lindroth writes. Getting your first period is an intimate, personal milestone she seems to imply. How could it possibly compare to a more dramatic world event? Now wait a minute, sister. If you want to go ahead and say it—getting your first period was almost as momentous as watching a world history event unfold—we’ll certainly understand.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 34 readers
PUBLISHER:	Twelve (February 26, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Rachel Kauder Nalebuff
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another review of same book

Bibliography:

• My Little Red Book (2009)