I absolutely adored this book! It's been a long time since I have enjoyed a novel so much. It's funny, quirky and thought-provoking but mostly it's a compelling read that makes it hard to put down because you simply want to know what happens next. Loved it!

This was my first experience reading T.C. Boyle and it was certainly an interesting one. Talk to Me explores animal consciousness and also what it means to be a human... what separates us from our monkey friends? Do they love? Do they have God? Do they have emotions? Can a monkey be saved?

Talk to Me offers us a few main characters, Guy, the overworked animal behavior professor, Aimee the shy undergrad student smitten with both Guy and his monkey subject. And then there's the lovable and charming Sam - a chimpanzee that communicates to humans through sign language. He's the real star of this show.

This is a mostly engaging read that is thought provoking, at times heart breaking and even occasionally funny. The prose is succinct and Boyle is obviously a talented writer; my biggest complaint would have to be the pacing. Talk to Me isn't necessarily un-put-downable and some may find it a bit dry, especially throughout the middle. However, I think any reader will be rewarded for sticking around and seeing how the story unfolds.

T.C. Boyle once again focuses his storytelling skills on the relationships between well intentioned humans and animals. This time we are in the 1970's when teaching chimps to communicate was all the rage. He tells the story of Sam, a chimp who has been raised since infancy by researcher Guy and his lab assistants. Sam attaches himself to Aimee, a new assistant, and she to him. Things spin out of control when the chimp studies fall out of favor in the research world and Sam's owner returns to claim him. Once again, Boyle asks many moral questions about our relationship with animals in this fascinating real life based story.

Boyle is the king of absurdist fiction. And with this novel he’s done it Again! Well worth the read. The reader can’t quite believe some of the comedy of errors events happening, which is what makes this book so divine.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book. I really enjoyed this one and read it in one day. Look forward to much more by this author.

TC Boyle is a must read author for me. I enjoyed this novel, as I do most of his writing. But, it was not my favorite. The plot here didn’t really take us anywhere.

I've been reading TC Boyle for the past 30 years or so, and while sometimes he falters, mostly he soars, as in this account of the attempts to bridge the species by performing studies on a chimp that has been raised by humans since birth. Sam is adorable, calculating, able to perform amazing feats of cognition. He is also several degrees of dna removed from humans. But from first sight, Aimee Villiers is completely smitten. She enters the study as an assistant, and there is an immediate bond between her and Sam, and also their professor. Boyle's books have been more and more concerned with scientific studies and sociological situations of the past that while sincere in the intent are inconsistent in the result, as with Drop City, Terranauts, The Road to Wellville. This is a work of humanity and compassion with sprinklings of humor. Just like Boyle himself.

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.

I really loved that damn chimpanzee as much as the protagonist. But more importantly it made me ponder the bioethics that lie between the spectrum of what human and animals are capable of.

Boyle is a talented writer and a pretty safe bet for readers. This book has lots of helpful reviews and ratings on Goodreads. I'll just recommend it to literary fiction fans.

Thanks very much for the review copy!!

4-1/2 stars. I'd read one novel by T.C. Boyle (Tortilla Curtain) several years ago, and loved it, so when this one popped up on Net Galley, I had to request it. Delighted to be approved to read and review it, I got to it as quickly as I could and was immediately enthralled. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing this eARC in exchange for an objective review.

This is the story of Sam, a chimpanzee who was taken from his mother as an infant in the wild, and raised by a junior professor and his wife as part of a research study into language acquisition in chimpanzees. The story is narrated in part by Sam himself, allowing the reader to see the events of the novel from Sam's unique perspective in addition to that of his human companions and keepers. It's also the story of Aimee, a painfully shy college student who sees Sam and his professor on a TV show, and impulsively decides to join the group of researchers working with him. Initially a volunteer, she quickly becomes a paid researcher, and is soon spending virtually all her time with Sam, developing a close and loving mutual bond that is sorely tested when the study is ultimately shut down. I read the last half of the novel in one sitting, eager to see how it ended. I'm sure I won't be the last reader to be heartbroken by its conclusion.

This book starts in an interesting way and quickly goes absolutely nowhere. This is the first book I’ve read of the author (and not interested in reading any others), his writing style makes me think he’s pretty high on himself. Pedantic and erudite are the first words that come to mind.

I finished the book, so it wasn’t all bad. Boyle paints a good picture of characters and he brings the characters to life. Unfortunately they are simple characters who don’t develop at all during the story.

Note: this book isn’t listed on GoodReads yet so I’m unable to post a review

Playful, intellectual, and entertaining -- T.C. Boyle examines humanity, personhood, and probes with questions of existence with humorous effect. A unique read that could only exist in Boyle's imagination.

TALK TO ME is exceptional, engrossing, enlightening; Speculative fiction soundly grounded in psychology and culture. Giving us a new glimpse behind the curtains of Scientific exploration and academic infighting, TALK TO ME explores primate culture and sentience simultaneously with human consciousness and frailty. Guaranteed to rip at your heartstrings and also incite joyful moments, TALK TO ME is a stunner.

Thank you to Ecco/HarperCollins for sending me an advanced readers copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It's 1979, and psychology Professor Guy Schermerhorn believes that a true communication breakthrough is imminent with Sam, a chimp who knows sign language. His wife, Melanie, was Sam's "mother," but she bailed on this rather grueling arrangement which is dirty, thankless, and all about Guy's bid for academic fame and glory. Enter Aimee, a sweet and apparently gullible young student. Her all-out commitment to being a caregiver for Sam will push her to grow in unexpected ways. Aimee's student predecessor also washed out of the job when Sam injured her.

"Talk to Me" has an edgy feeling typical of Boyle; off-kilter, like anything could happen in a flash. In one paragraph Boyle is almost rhapsodic, then in the next, he flips into rapid-fire bluntness which adds to the dangerous mood. Boyle writes from Sam's perspective part of the time, and at first, the reader doesn't know the time frame of the parts that are written from Sam's perspective. Sam's voice is dead compelling and makes the reader identify with Aimee's sympathy for him. Guy (who is creepy to the point of being almost predatory) is happy to take full advantage of Aimee's affection for Sam and enthusiasm for the experiment. Indeed Aimee seems indifferent about her grades and her future; she becomes every bit as obsessed with Sam as it suits Guy for her to be.

The clock is ticking. As an adult chimpanzee, Sam will be strong and likely unmanageable. If any advance beyond signs is to occur, it needs to happen while Sam is a juvenile (or so Guy thinks). Will Sam become too much for even Aimee to manage? She has a closer bond with him than either Guy, who raised him and taught him to communicate via signs, or the evil Dr. Montcrief, who owns Sam and is running out of patience.

Ultimately it feels as though intelligence and communication don't matter as much as power and weapons, and it is the observers, not the communicators, who define a "breakthrough." If they are not observing and recording the advance in chimp communication, it isn't happening. What that is high and noble actually separates humans from apes? Not much, in the case of the professors, or those weaker individuals whom these alpha males decide to use and abuse to suit their own ends. Or, for that matter, the determination of the victims to risk everything to take care of each other, cross-species or not.

Aimee was not as strong a character as some of Boyle's other female characters, although maybe that was the point--she is instantaneously subsumed within a professor and a chimp, and will not become a full person until later. I was unable to really get a bead on her at all. Other than that, the book is simply stunning and really thought-provoking.