The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore [Paperback]

This is a long review: but it's of a long book, and I felt I couldn't do this incredible novel any justice without getting really stuck-in. So here goes...

In brief: 'The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore' is the fictional memoir of a chimpanzee. Read that again if you like, I'll give you a sec...

... Yup, the titular protagonist is a narrator of the arboreal variety; a Pan troglodytes; a monkey! The subject of an unprecedentedly successful linguistic science experiment, Bruno can not only talk but acquires an eloquence and mellifluousness of language most writers could only dream of possessing. He's a precocious and sassy narrator, but his flippancy of style is tempered by comic phrasing and delivery, thus rather than being an overbearing and pretentious storyteller, Bruno is almost Wildean in his erudition, redolent of Humbert Humbert or even Patrick Bateman. This stylistic convergence of humour with gravitas is mirrored in the book's plot, which skilfully balances the scales of Comedy and Tragedy in equal measure, an approach that offers an insight into the novel's wide-ranging and myriad influences. Bruno's life story is at times hysterically funny and at others so marred by the deepest heartbreak and despair that I almost stopped reading out of fear that, by pressing on, I would make something horrible happen. But most significantly for a novel of this length, the book is just relentlessly interesting, a fact entirely down to Benjamin Hale's range and dexterity as a writer. The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is an utterly, utterly amazing book.

The crux of the novel is a kind of 21st Century re-imagining of the ancient Greek philosophical problem Theseus' Ship (or `Trigger's Broom', if you prefer...), in this instance one might opt for the moniker `Hale's Monkey', namely: if Bruno replaces all of his constituent `chimpness' with human attributes (language, clothes, physical changes (via plastic surgery), behaviour, creativity etc. etc.) has he become a human? It's a problem particularly prevalent in science-fiction robot sagas (notably Isaac Asimov's 'The Positronic Man' or 'I, Robot' , Alastair Reynolds' 'House of Suns' or even Steven Spielberg's 'A.I.') and, to a lesser extent, Disney's 'Pinocchio' (an obvious and oft-cited inspiration); and while Hale is liberal with his application of canonical quotations, it's a shame that the book doesn't give a more knowing nod-of-the-head to the sources of what is essentially a well-established and significant trope of sci-fi literature. But this is a minor niggle, an itch the sci-fi snob in me rarely sees scratched. Bruno's heuristic to the problem of classification is a linguistic imperative that places language as the predominant condition required for a definition of humanity. All of Bruno's physical/behavioural adaptations are insignificant next to his ability to speak; language is used as the yardstick to differentiate him from all other animals and bring him closer to this much longed-for state of humanity, and with it: acceptance. As far as Bruno is concerned: he can speak, and is therefore a man.

One of the ways in which our non-human narrator tries to convince the reader of his humanity is to cram the narrative with hundreds of literary references. Rather than being a conceited attempt to show-off his reading, this becomes a desperate and incredibly moving plea for understanding and acceptance, as literature and language are Bruno's most cogent tools in his quest to be taken seriously. Literature becomes the structure that Bruno regards as most significant in distinguishing himself from all other animals, and his narrative style is characterised by a kind of literary appropriation that takes the form of direct but non-attributed quotations. My copy is now overspread with scrawly marginalia, and I made a game of trying to identify as many as possible.

This does, however, bring a level of artifice to the narration which somewhat undermines Bruno's agenda. There's a definite disconnect between Bruno's desire to convince us of his humanity, and the unreliability of both his prose and himself as narrator. Crucially, the reader is at a multi-layered remove from the actual events described. These `memoirs' are based on some notes written by the fictional `Gwen' and originally dictated by Bruno some twenty years after the fact. Compounding this is Gewn's implied questioning of the memoirs' accuracy and Bruno's own constant admissions of poetic exaggeration, exclusion, erratic memory and bias. There are many instances, for example, in which characters don't seem at all perturbed to encounter an up-right walking, talking chimpanzee: a problem which can be easily dismissed as an idiosyncrasy/embellishment of Bruno's narration, rather than a failing of Benjamin Hale as a writer. This has the double-edged-sword effect of drawing the reader's attention to the improbability of the events described (this is, after all, a book narrated by a monkey), while simultaneously protecting the writer from accusations of unrealistic writing and narrative contradiction.

Yet even in this, it's very difficult to draw any criticisms against the book, because so much of it feels like a game being played with the reader by Bruno (and by extension, Hale). The novel is full of trickery, doubles, red-herrings and theatre; there's even a brilliant, brilliant re-creation of Falstaff, and the most beautiful imagining of The Tempest I've ever encountered. The story of Lydia (Bruno's lover), for example, is the direct opposite of Bruno's own; a kind of inverse parallel that serves to hubristically tear the lovers apart when they should be moving together at their closest. Lydia suffers a tumour-related linguistic aphasia, which sees her lose the ability to speak just as Bruno's language is flourishing; it's a moving yet satisfying double to Bruno's story. Synthesising these more figurative notions of doubling with the physical-world of the novel is a preoccupation with mirrors and reflections. When Bruno has a nose-job, he spends many, many (many) hours staring at this post-Voldemort reflection in a bathroom mirror: a practice at once abstract and relatable, as Bruno simultaneously criticises human behaviour (in this instance, vanity) while unwittingly engaging in said behaviour himself. This convergence of the figurative with the literal is perhaps The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore's most striking achievement.

And no review of 'The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore' would be complete without at least a passing mention of all the intra-species sex that runs rampant through the novel. Lydia is a human, Bruno a monkey: they have sex. My initial reaction was probably the same as most people's, a kinda dismissive "that's gross!" - but I'd beg you to reserve judgement until you've read it. The sex is described using the language of high Romance, and terms like `bestiality' or `zoophilia' really don't seem fit for purpose. However, you really do have to be a moral relativist with this, and if you're not willing, then maybe this book's not for you. Occasionally the sexual language falls into the trap of needless gratuity, but more often than not it is tender, and convincing to the extent that you wonder why you ever questioned the union in the first place. Stick with it.

I've not talked much about the plot because, frankly, the way this story is told is significantly more interesting than the narrative itself - but this isn't any kind of criticism: equally, a story of this complexity is almost impossible to describe without extensive spoilers, and this coloured my approach as well. As things stand, I hope I've managed to give at least a half-decent picture of this extraordinary book. I usually try not to resort to the clichéd hyperbole of book geekdom: but I devoured this novel, and encourage you to do the same. It's not perfect, and some of the visual metaphors are a tad cringe-worthy (such as a human toddler and a chimp baby pressing their hands together against a dividing glass window at the zoo), but you can count the number of such gaffs on one hand, which is pretty darn good considering how long this book is.

By far the most incredible thing about the novel, however, is that it hasn't made a bigger splash. Published several months ago, it has "promptly sunk without a ripple", and I cannot understand why. I despair to think that just because a book is long and difficult it's being ignored. The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore deserves more attention, and if it weren't such a naff thing to do, I'd pester every book-blogger I know until they review it themselves. Read it. Give it time and patience. It is long and it is challenging, but it's also beautiful and rewarding. A quiet and unassuming masterpiece; once it has it's small tendrils around your mind and heart, it never lets go.

i read this book over a long weekend spent recuperating from knee-knack - top drawer. very funny. heartily recommended - and what a sensational price.

What would be a stranger idea than a novel about a chimp who has learnt to speak who directs Shakespearean plays? Arguably, the fact that such novel has apparently sunk without a ripple.

TEoBL was released at the beginning of 2011 but I had never heard of it until I received an email from the publishers, offering me a free copy of the book in exchange for a review. When the postman handed me the package and I physically felt the weight of the tome, I prayed to myself that I hadn't made an error of judgement in committing my precious reading time to a talking chimp. [I will tell you straight away that I ought not have worried - it was all worth it.]

The novel tells us the story, as narrated by Bruno himself from his place of confinement some years later, of a young chimp born in a Chicago zoo. At a young age, he is selected as the subject of a project attempting to teach apes the human language. In brief, Bruno is adopted by the primatologist in charge of the project, with whom he promptly falls in love; a sexual relationship between the two ensues. Interspecies love is not, however, allowed to happen without repercussions, and eventually Bruno, who for a series of dramatic events has become a fugitive, will have to make his own way into the human world. Accidentally ending up in New York City, the chimp meets street actor Leon and together they cheat and trick their ways into staging an underground production of The Tempest. When the play fails to set the NY theatre scene on fire, the two friends decide to part ways and so Bruno finds its way back to Chicago, where he will have to face the fact that he is no longer just an animal, but neither is he going to be accepted by humans as a peer.

This is the plot, or rather, the narrative excuse for Bruno's musings which are the real purpose of this book. The plot itself is not the main reason why you will keep on reading this novel, despite its intimidating verbosity: that is just a device to allow Bruno's voice to come through and blast us with Big Themes while he takes us through his evolution from captive chimp to enlightened, erudite human. Yes, this is a book of Big Themes: what makes us human? What does it mean to be human? And is the price to pay for our evolution?

Camouflaged as the interior monologue of a speaking chimp, what we have is a panoramic view of the author's own perception of life; from organised religion ("why must these intolerant people be tolerated?") to ecology ("let the earth die, let all the animals die") to the slavery of modern working life ("that sweet period of the day interstitially nestled between work and sleep, the precious mortar that glues together these two dull bricks that every day stack up and up and up to form the big flat wall of most of your life"). If Benjamin Hale had set out to write a 576 pages tome of his own ramblings about Life in General, it would have been an unreadable, tedious mess - and after all, there are already hundreds of thousands of blogs created precisely for that purpose, most of which are mercifully destined to remain confined to the deepest recesses of the world wide web. But, filtered by Bruno's voice and as an accompaniment to the story, reading these pages dense with Hale's own philosophising is really quite beautiful.

As others reviews have pointed out, the human gift of language and knowledge makes Bruno's story that of a modern day Frankenstein, created in the image of homo sapiens; unlike Frankenstein, however, Hale allows Bruno to mingle in human life with relative ease - "So are you a midget, or what?" he is asked by one of the many marginal human characters in the book; "In a sense, yes" he admits. In the hands of a less skilled writer our suspension of disbelief would crumble for the lack of realism, but somehow, we go along with the belief that Bruno can pass as a human pretty much unobserved. Hale does it in two ways: firstly, by making Bruno increasingly anthropomorphic by first having him suffer of sudden alopecia - and therefore being hairless and then by letting him get a human nose thanks to the services of a backstreet doctor; secondly, by letting all the narration be done by Bruno himself and therefore giving us only a partial view of the picture. One often wonders if maybe Bruno is deluding himself about his almost-human appearance; what are the people around him actually thinking?

Made articulate by language, Bruno goes through life with the perspective of an outsider who is becoming part of the picture. Chapter by chapter, us, the readers, step out of our human nature and watch it initially from the point of view of a new citizen, an immigrant who is trying to incorporate himself into a community whilst navigating the new country's jungle of idiosyncrasies. By the final chapters, however, we are reminded of the fact that Bruno is not the proverbial alien who has landed on earth, but one of `the others', namely all the other living species that the sovereign human race managed to turn into its subjects. Back at the Chicago zoo and looking at his old chimp enclosure from the outside, Bruno imagines what a similar enclosure for humans would look like, and what the information card would read: "...this species has spread to nearly every climate and lives on every continent of the world."

Within these two pages of made-up zoological description, Hale paints a harsh but true ecological critique of our race, exposing our arrogance and our dominant nature; "Due to its alpha predator status coupled with the ability to control its own climate, the human has ceased to evolve, thereby effectively removing itself from nature".
It is a pessimistic outlook but one that I share with the author, because for all the music, arts and technological innovation, the fact still is that we, the human race, have detached ourselves from our own environment so much that we now look at nature as if through the glass of a zoo enclosure - firmly from the outside.

Safely behind the reinforced layer of plexiglass, the human is safe and in control: a polar bear who dares attack a homo sapiens will be shot down; a shark that got too close will be hunted down and put on display; a tree whose roots get in the way of a water pipe will be felled. Humanity, Bruno has come to understand, is safe and sound: "Currently, the only palpable threat to the human is the human" .