I found this book fascinating. Told from the perspective of a monkey, it sheds light on the destruction that humans are causing to the environment, wrapped in a monkey quest and ending in a gently apocalyptic love story. It was hard to put down.

Oh Bill Roorbach! A few years ago I stumbled across <I>The Cure for Love</I> and then my writing group dove into <I> Writing Life Stories </I>, but in characteristic fashion, I managed to forget how solid, generous, and supple a writer he is.

Enter <I>Beep</I>, a charming if difficult to characterize novel with a squirrel-monkey as a main character. Yes. Beep, a monkey with an imperfect grasp of English, but a thoroughly modern set of problems: he leaves his troupe in search of lost family, only to find himself scooped up by a well-heeled 11-year-old on vacation in Costa Rica and transported, willy-nilly amidst the girl's stuffed animals, to a Manhattan apartment.

I started to write, "that's when things get nutty," but that characterization is unfair. For a clever, self-aware squirrel monkey and the sensitive tween whom he grows to love, the story is never <i>not</> a bit nutty. Beep is on a quest, and we are just here to witness: Greta Thunberg plays a role, as does the liberation of most of the Bronx Zoo, a cross-dressing bus driver, and a pair of Buddhist monks.

I hesitate to quote from my pre-publication copy, but the writing! the writing! The beginning “I am Beep, monkey. I live in the world of monkeys near saltwater on the sunset side of the vast beyond.” Beep bonding with his human, Inga, “The old uncles say there are many kinds of wub and a new one befell me in that moment, suffused me: buddies.” (Me too, Beep, me too!), and this about the age-old communication that humans have mostly forgotten: “There arose a vibration, a thought moving through not only the trees but all things green, and all things. The forest always knows you’re coming, and that’s how the rocks know, and so the lichens, the mosses.”

If you loved <i>Watership Down, </i>or <i>Remarkably Bright Creatures,</i> or <i>Timothy, or, Notes of an Abject Reptile</i> you’ll love this tender and beautifully written novel. If you have any feeling for the ecological doom sweeping over our shared world, this story will be serve as both a gentle warning and a heartening call to action. If you are neither, I prescribe this book as cure.

Thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the eARC in exchange for my unfettered opinion.

While I was excited to read this based on the description, I DNFed around 20%. Told from the perspective of the monkey Beep, who is trying to cross Costa Rica and meets a girl who he becomes friends with (this is as far as I got). The writing, from the perspective of the monkey frequently used language such as (and here I paraphrase) The you-mens in their meddle goer (the humans in their metal car) and she tossed a pebber on the paddy-o (she tossed a pepper on the patio). It is intended to give you a feel for how the monkey is processing the world, but I did find it irritating enough to not continue. I hoped that this language would peter out as the book progressed, but around 20% where they were in an airport, it actually ramped up as the monkey described the travel process. I was really interested in the story, but the voice of the monkey narrator was not to my liking.