From My Bookshelf....by Lynn Willoughby

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Ape House - Sara Gruen

Having read and enjoyed and passed around "Water For Elephants" Gruen's previous novel, I had very high expectations for this latest offering. I was disappointed - but maybe I had set myself up.

The initial setting is a research centre dedicated to the study of the communicative behaviour of bonobo apes. After a bomb blast destroys the lab and injures Isabel Duncan, the bonobos are moved to New Mexico.
Lizard, New Mexico becomes a madhouse as the media frenzy spirals upwards over the latest reality TV show - the life of the bonobos. Each individual ape personality shines through and we feel as though we know these bonobos personally. But the characterization of the people in this novel is extremely weak.

I felt as though Gruen was reaching for content as she introduces the green-haired vegan protester, the meth lab's guard dog, Ivanka - the friendly, neighbourhood stripper, Amanda's botox, hair and body-image encounters with Hollywood - and she's the script writer!!

This novel felt rushed to me and it certainly lacked the whimsy of "Water for Elephants." The biggest disappointment of all was the ending - not very creative or memorable. Basically this book was just too much about the humans and not enough about the much more interesting story of the bonobos.
 Water For Elephants
………several others

Shadowtag - Louise Erdich
I read my first novel by Erdich many years ago - "The Crown of Columbus", and have been a fan ever since. All of her fiction has a ring of truth based on historical data and that is my favourite type of book.

This is the story of a troubled marriage and how that discord affects the entire family. Irene is finishing her doctoral thesis on George Catlin - the nineteenth century painter of Native Americans. Gil, her husband, is also a painter, whose most highly regarded works are all revealing portraits of Irene.

As in her previous work, Erdich's Ojibwa heritage flavours this novel of differing tribal backgrounds contributing to the deceit and abuse of the couple who cannot live with or without each other. Their three children are caught in the war of the parents and Erdich does a "beautiful job of demonstrating that love, or some version of it, does not prevent verbal or physical abuse."

There are multiple narrators and this complex novel shows the challenges facing Gil and Irene because of the lack of a larger extended family. The narrative is heart-breaking but believable and the ending manages to surprise us by revealing the omniscient narrator.
    The Beet Queen
    The Master Butcher's Singing Club
…………and many others including poetry, children's stories and non-fiction

Who Knew?
The Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucio signed the first map of the east coast of North America and thereby accidently named two continents.