Interviews with an Ape
By Felice Fallon
Blurb
Ripped from family.
Sold into captivity.
Held for financial gain.
This is a book about vulnerable animals and the men who interact with them. And it's about us. Our pasts and our present, and the way we see the world.
It's about the triumph of hope, our infinite capacities to endure and to love - and how we survive through the tales we tell.
Most of all it's a story of homecoming told through a gorilla called Einstein who comes to us with a remarkable secret. He can communicate with humans through sign language.
Interviews With An Ape is a work of imaginative daring, written with a direct simplicity yet deep insight. A novel of beginnings and endings, destruction and restoration, its many voices will linger long in the memory and in the heart.
Our Review
"To this day memories of my family are vague, for I was very young when they were killed. Even now I cannot tell you what I felt when I lost them, for there are no words in my language, or yours, which can convey my grief."
After finishing Interviews With An Ape I felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness. Normally after finishing a book this would be best described as 'a book hangover' but in this case the sadness was because while the book may be a work of fiction the cruelty we inflict on other species is not.
Interviews With an Ape is written in the form of a series of interviews by Dr Sadiq and "my colleague, Einstein, a male silverback, Mountain gorilla." The interviews were communicated via sign language.
The book also contained chapters from the points of view of multiple animals and also the humans involved in their lives for good or bad.
Interviews With An Ape is violent, harrowing and all the more harrowing for containing real life practices, the sections on bear bile in particular were tough reading.
It was a disturbing read but I am glad I read it.
"If you humans do not change your ways your children will wake up one day and find their world emptied of all the abundant life that once thrived. They will pore over their picture books and read their stories and look about them and wonder what happened to that paradise you call earth. And then they will look at you, their parents, and grandparents, demanding answers you cannot give. Do not worry for me. Worry for them."
Our Final Rating...
Read & Shared 21 Times.
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