Talk to Me

by T. C. Boyle, Stacey Glemboski (Read by), TBD (Read by)

Overview

From bestselling and award-winning author T.C. Boyle, a lively, thought-provoking novel that asks us what it would be like if we could really talk to the animals When animal behaviorist Guy Schermerhorn demonstrates on a TV game show that he has taught Sam, his juvenile chimp, to speak in sign language, Aimee Villard, an undergraduate at Guy's university, is so taken with the performance that she applies to become his assistant.  A romantic and intellectual attachment soon morphs into an interspecies love triangle that pushes hard at the boundaries of consciousness and the question of what we know and how we know it.  

What if it were possible to speak to the members of another species—to converse with them, not just give commands or coach them but to really have an exchange of ideas and a meeting of minds? Did apes have God?  Did they have souls?  Did they know about death and redemption?  About prayer?  The economy, rockets, space?  Did they miss the jungle?  Did they even know what the jungle was?  Did they dream?  Make wishes?  Hope for the future?

These are some the questions T.C. Boyle asks in his wide-ranging and hilarious new novel Talk to Me, exploring  what it means to be human, to communicate with another, and to truly know another person—or animal… 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798200741908
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

T. Coraghessan Boyle vive con su familia cerca de Santa Barbara, California. Recibió su doctorado en literatura inglesa de la University of Iowa y ha enseñado escritura creativa en la University of Southern California desde 1977. Otras de sus famosas novelas incluyen World’s End (ganador del premio PEN/Faulkner en ficción) y Water Music. Sus novelas cortas aparecen regularmente en revistas de prestigio como Harper’s y The New Yorker.

Stacey Glemboski is a seasoned voice artist and audiobook narrator of many books in the science fiction and young adult fiction genres.

Hometown:

Santa Barbara California

Date of Birth:

December 2, 1948

Place of Birth:

Peekskill, New York

Education:

B.A. in music, State University of New York at Potsdam, 1970; Ph.D. in literature, Iowa University, 1977

Website:

http://www.tcboyle.com/

Editorial Reviews

07/19/2021

Boyle’s diverting latest (after Outside Looking In) is equal parts road novel, campus drama, and roundabout love triangle focused around Sam, an intelligent chimp raised among humans who communicates through sign language, making him a brief cause célèbre in the mid-1980s. Behavioral scientist and college professor Guy Schermerhorn has a lot to prove—his life’s a ruin and his custodianship of Sam is in question—leading him to stake everything on an appearance with Sam on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, lest Guy’s sinister superior, Dr. Moncrief, cart Sam off to be experimented on, or worse. Guy enlists Aimee Villard, an eager student with an immediate connection to Sam. Professor and student embark on a halfhearted relationship, but both are focused on the increasingly demanding chimp, and, as Dr. Moncrief moves to make good on his threats, Aimee takes Sam on a cross-country road trip, winding up in a trailer court in Arizona, where the two eke out a life among the local misfit community. Chapters from Sam’s perspective make him a captivating creation, but fans of Boyle will recognize a bit of retread from his previous novels and stories. It’s a fun ride, but it doesn’t exactly break new ground. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt, Inc. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Boyle eloquently lays out the philosophical and ethical debates of raising chimps in a human household…Boyle poignantly exposes our anthropocentric biases while exploring the nature of consciousness and reminds us of the adage about the most dangerous species in the zoo being the humans.

Booklist

Boyle eloquently lays out the philosophical and ethical debates of raising chimps in a human household…Boyle poignantly exposes our anthropocentric biases while exploring the nature of consciousness and reminds us of the adage about the most dangerous species in the zoo being the humans.

Booklist

2021-06-16
Farce meets tragedy and science meets show business in this romantic triangle featuring a student, a professor, and a chimpanzee.

There’s an antic energy to Boyle's latest which comes at the expense of character development. Aimee Villard is naïve and beautiful, a college student who recognizes how attractive she is because of her effect on men—and a certain chimpanzee. Yet she refuses to use her beauty to manipulate and thus provides this novel with its heart. She is a cliché of the innocent young coed when that term was used often and seemingly without condescension. Guy Schermerhorn is a professor who's deeply invested in researching the communicative possibilities between humankind and the simian world and who parlays that work into TV appearances. After his marriage falls apart, he falls in love, or lust, with Aimee, whom he's hired to help with his live-in chimpanzee. The chimp, named Sam, also falls in love with Aimee because of the same animal magnetism that attracts Guy. As the characters in this novel respond to animal urges and instincts, Sam emerges as the most complex. Short chapters written to capture his perspective alternate with longer ones that find his human enablers attempting to deal with whatever mischief he has made. And they alternate along different timelines, with Sam’s chapters often reflecting a near future that the humans have yet to experience. Sam can talk with sign language and understand, he responds to treats and to scolding, but he also learns to lie and scheme and manipulate, aping human behavior. As Sam and Guy compete for Aimee’s affection (which she shares with both), Aimee and Guy compete for Sam’s favor. And all of them must contend with another professor, a supervisor to whom Guy reports, who is some sort of alpha male. Or maybe God—to the animals, at least. Despite his domestication, Sam occasionally shows signs of being a wild animal. This can’t end well, and it doesn’t, as a comedy of manners takes a darker turn.

There might be a movie here, Planet of the Apes as a rom-com.

Kirkus Reviews