Talk to Me by T.C. Boyle

​    Some of my favorite stories feature primates, from Planet of the Apes to King Kong. So this book had an immediate appeal. The author it seems has had a long and productive career thus far and this is my first time reading him, though this book served as a most auspicious of introductions. Proper literary fiction and a fascinating concept. Not a new one or unheard of by any means, in fact it’s practically a fictionalized account of Project Nim. Which, for those who don’t know, is a documentary based on the language experiement conducted from the early age with a ridiculously adorable chimp named Nim Chimpsky. Nim also wasn’t the first, best or only simian learner of sign language. There’s a totally awesome gorilla named Koko, who is absolutely worth checking out on Youtube. But Nim, like Sam the protagonist of this novel, are both chimps, the species that share the insane 98.9% of our DNA.
   Sam is a bright precocious youngster when we meet him, too much to handle for Guy Schermerhorn, the professor experimentally raising him and when the existing assistants prove insufficient, he hires new ones, Enter Aimee, a shy but intrigued 21 year old college girl with zero experience. But then again, none is needed, because from the instance they meet, Sam and Aimee share a connection. They become inseparable. Even when the circumstances conspire to separate them.  And thus unfolds the story of the talking ape. And a woman who loves him.
    While definitely no Planet of the Apes, this novel does echo King Kong in a way. It is a love story, unorthodox as it is. In fact, at times it’s positively a love triangle between Guy, Aimee and Sam. It isn’t a simple kind of love, more of a potent brew of romantic, parental/childlike, caretaker/cared for, etc. Two outcasts who don’t really belong with their own kind and find a strange codependency with each other. It’s desperate, tragic and can’t possibly end well, but it isn’t so much the beauty that kills the beast here as it is the hubristically mismanaged expectations of others. In having been raised as a person, Sam was brought up against his very nature and he ends up belonging to no world. A tragic character, really.
    Aimee is tragic too, but in a different way, the obsessiveness of her love and devotion is her Sisyphean boulder. She can’t walk away, doesn’t have Guy’s calculating pragmatism to guide her. Or Sam’s legal owner,  Guy’s own professor’s sheer evil practicality. Evil’s apt here actually,  the guy is fictionally rendered as a comic book antagonist, appearance to attitude.
   It stands to mention that the novel takes place about four decades ago before animal rights (apes and otherwise) became a thing, so Sam is pretty much at mercy or whoever owns him and their designs on him. As are all the other apes in this book. So yes, it’s  very sad, very disturbing and might be too much for some readers.
     Readers seem to have gotten more dainty these days, so yeah, consider this to be a warning for animal abuse. But seriously, shouldn’t people try to read challenging things…something that stretches their emotional boundaries as much as the intellectual ones? I believe so. And this book certainly does that. It posits large questions about the meaning of language and sentience and faith and ability to genuinely communicate and, of course, love…and it also absolutely guts you emotionally. There, you’ve been warned.
    It isn’t so much a question of do we strive to communicate with other species beyond natural means, it’s question of should we. But then again you meet a cute chimp in overalls who knows sign language and you just go…talk to me. Can’t help it. It’s too fascinating. Though, of course, words or no words,  so often our interactions (with animals or people) say more about us than them. Either way…talk to me will speak to you. It’s just that different readers might hear different things. I enjoyed it very much. Terrific writing and themes of great interest to me. Great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.