***** It should be stated up front that if you ever intend to read the book Ape House and do not wish to have the experience tainted and some of the so-called mysteries spoiled, it is advised to stop reading this blog at once. You have been warned.*****
Author Sara Gruen loves animals. So much in fact that all of her stories set themselves in motion amidst a backdrop of beasts. I have never read her first two books. They're about horses it would seem. She hit paydirt with her third novel, and this managed to even get my attention. Water for Elephants.
This novel has been hailed as a modern day classic of literature and is now soon to be ushered out into the public as a major motion picture that will feature Reese Witherspoon smiling her way through the story alongside the brooding talents of that guy who played in all of those shitty Twilight movies.
The book has already caused readers worldwide to spew their literary jizz all over the pages and now they probably have to buy more books because don't the pages stick together when you do that? But as soon as she who smiles a lot and he, who shall not be named here in efforts to prevent an army of pre-pubescent hussies bum-rushing my blog and asking if I even realize whose talents I am deriding here, are seen all over movie screens everywhere in their efforts to upstage an elephant with a whole lot of grinning and glooming, well.... it's all over at that point. The book will become legend. If you think that Water for Elephants has been hyped now? As a book? Just you wait until that dipshit from those emo vampire flicks gets his pasty face next to that elephant. The elephant fit will shit the shan me thinks.
I read Water for Elephants. I liked it even. I wouldn't exactly hail it as a classic or anything of the sort. But yeah, it had a certain sweetness to it and it held my attention after getting it. I think that Sara Gruen is a good writer. Not a great writer. But, yes.... a good one. She evokes emotion well. This particularly as a result of her animals. The woman just loves animals, like I said.
She touches the heartstrings. Not necessarily tugging on them, or ripping them out, like a great writer would do. But she does get in there and touch you. I dig that a whole lot if I agree to it. The animals are not just cake and fluff to soak up her human characters sobs and messes. These animals are real characters themselves and their actions and emotions drive her stories just as much as anything you will get from the puny human stuff.
She is creative. Descriptive. Passionate. She does what good writers should do very well. She brings her characters to life and makes you feel like they are sitting right next to you. You smell them. Even when they reek of an inhuman pestilence that no shower can wash away. You care what is going to happen to these people. Her characters. Even if you hope they will soon wind up gutted in a ditch somewhere. You care. That is what a good writer does and she absolutely succeeds in this particular book.
I couldn't stop reading Water for Elephants. For better or for worse. I felt like it kind of ran out of steam towards the last section. Without ruining it for anybody still wishing to read that novel, I didn't buy the ending one bit either. It was lazy and fluffy and it tried way too hard to send the reader to sleep after closing the book with an elephant shit eating grin and a warm feeling around your heart. It's the perfect type of ending to a movie that will star Reese Witherspunk though. Always with the smiles, that woman.
Added with that goofy Twilight guy, I can only imagine their onscreen dynamic will resemble paint thinner and tomato juice poured into the same glass for consumption.
As a writer myself I am rather persnickety and can be quite critical at times. Even on my own bad self. So yeah .... Water for Elephants.... good book. It's pure sap if you're looking for that sort of thing. Just don't think too much about it all. Thinking is really not required when reading fluff. Just puff and fluff and leave on repeat until the end. Just make damn sure you end on a fluffy note though.
I admit that I can be all gooey inside and touchy feely and love to ooze sweetness as thick as anybody. Around the time I finished reading Water for Elephants I saw that Sara Gruen had just released a new book called Ape House. I did some poking around. Another book involving animals. Apes this time, obviously. Apes are cool, right? Hell, I share a blog with one.
I went ahead and picked up Ape House from Amazon because, in case you are not aware, Amazon is the shit. I have been doing a whole lot of reading lately. It's kind of helped to inspire my own writing actually and that is a good thing. No, okay....fuck that. It's a great thing. So hats off to Sara Gruen and any other writers I have been reading here.
I read the jacket of Ape House and it sounded interesting enough. I had actually read an interview with her just after finishing Water for Elephants and that tickled my fancy a little more about wanting to read the book than the synopsis on the jacket did. Sara was inspired to write this book from her own experiences with apes that are called bonobos. If you wish to know more about these magnificent creatures please look them up on the internet on your own time as I am not National Geographic and the overall particulars surrounding these animals has little to do with what I am wishing to write about here.
There are, however, two things that are central to the story. Bonobos are very proficient at communicating with humans through what is referred to as ASL. American Sign Language. They are also extremely sexual in a most alarming and casual sense of being so. Think of us humans for a minute. Now imagine if say.... you were to be walking down the street.... and you passed by a stranger. Any gender because this appears to have no course of effect on their sexual habits. As you walk by this stranger you jump up on their shoulder and rub your genitalia across their chin because it's sexy time. Then you hop down and continue walking. Yeah, it's kind of like that. In fact, it's exactly like that. All the time too because to a bonobo it's always sexy time.
Sara clocked in much research time in order to study the habits of the bonobos and familiarize herself with their language. In fact, many of the exchanges between the apes and the human characters in the book were actually based on some of her own real conversations with newly acquired ape friends. The kinships she would build served as a catalyst for the story to be told.
I immediately began to think of the powers of emotion that she conveyed so masterfully with Rosie the elephant, and though I think it best to never begin a book with any sort of expectations what so ever, I prepared myself for a beautifully crafted tale that would give the reader an astute analysis of the majesty and intellect that lurks deepest within the hearts and minds of these remarkable creatures. All brought into play with a touch of romance and suspense.
The story revolves around John Thigpen. A reporter who gets the chance of a lifetime when he is allowed inside of the great ape language lab and interviews scientist Isabel Duncan, along with her awesome group of apes, for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The interview goes well and the story seems to be over until an animal rights group, so we are led to believe, blows up the lab and liberates the apes. Isabel is blasted not quite to that Kingdom Come place and has to undergo reconstructive surgery.
Meanwhile, her assistant, the tattooed and pink haired intern Celia, just happened to step out for Starbucks right before the blast and may or may not be implicated. Isabel's lab partner, Peter, also happens to be her fiance who boned Celia after a New Years Eve party. Blah-blah-blah.
Added for even more character measure is John's wife, Amanda. She's a disgruntled author whose only book tanked and has currently been gathering dust while she gets rejection letters for her second manuscript. But things have just looked up for Amanda. A television pilot that she wrote has now been picked up for syndication and she gets whisked away to L.A. Obviously this strains the couples marriage, but hey.... aren't strained marriages perfect drama fodder?
The jacket implies there will be some sort of relationship between Thigpen and Isabel. Meanwhile, there are plenty of jokes about his name. Pigpen, anyone? There really is nothing to bother about there. The bulk of the novel centers on him, either alone or floating in and out of everyone elses plotted sidelines. His story of a lifetime gets high-jacked by a ruthless co-worker and he winds up quitting and moving out to the land of the lost to be with his wife.
Obviously miserable on the West coast, our hero gets a job at a shitty tabloid paper and his luck eventually leads him back within poop throwing distance of Isabel and the apes. Once again, there is very little in the way of a relationship here as these two don't even touch base until roughly the last 50 pages. I am not exactly sure what I was expecting as far as relationships go. But I was thinking there would be some romance splashed in there somewhere. What did I get? Apes fucking. More on that later though.
The main focus of the book is Thigpen, as he struggles to hold together a seemingly crumbling marriage and redeem himself from another shitty job, while desperately trying to write a good story, even if it is against the wishes and demands of his editor. He now works for the tabloids, who are more known for their dirt not Pulitzer Prize worthy journalism.
There are plenty of instances where the author alludes to some sort of sexual tension between Thigpen and Isabel. Although the tension is fleeting and unrequited, only to vanish into thin air amongst all the other nonsense. He thinks about her. He touches her a certain way. He sparks up at her presence or mention. But he is married and he stays that way. Throw in a few marital scraps here and there and we've got some hackneyed attempts at drama.
Speaking of the marriage, Amanda is actually the most interesting character of the entire book. Still scathing from her wounds of being rejected as an author, she dreams, with wide eyed apple pie innocence, of landing a writing job out in the land of make believe and before long she is eaten alive. She gets hit on by her thought to be gay assistent and she begins a transformation of sorts into the very thing that repulses her most. A well preened zombie dressed to impress, despite the fact that she actually fails terribly at doing so.
Still, Amanda is not really the focus here. Much of the book rests upon our pigboy wonder. He tries to get his story. He re-connects with Isabel. He runs across an obnoxious green-haired teenager who may or may not be his son. Drama ensues and cliches abound.
Amanda would have been a far more interesting centerpiece for the story in my opinion, as she has all the makings of a great character. Beautiful but insecure. Ambitious and yet wet behind the ears.Though Amanda is not exactly a likable role model, she is very interesting in that fucked up and what will she do next kind of way. Being filler for the rest of the smatterings, she doesn't really seem to do a whole lot of anything except muse on her shitty life and whine about wanting a baby whenever she does manage to pop onto the pages.
Another character who merely serves as a bookend for the action is Peter, Isabel's lab partner and fiance. The guy is a prick. The author throws this out there from the get go and never lets up. Of course, despite how much of a prick he is he doesn't exactly try hard to be mysterious enough and the revelations behind our dastardly dickweed roll out as rather ho-hum.
I know what you're thinking here. Aren't there apes in this book? Well, the beginning is promising enough and the set up for the apes is captivating. Their interaction with Isabel is rather sweet and most enjoyable. But the lab quickly gets blown up and the apes wind up across the street in trees. They get shot down and kidnapped and before you can slide out towards the edge of your seat and wonder what happened to them, you find out and the discoveries will make you feel like scratching your head and going "ummm.... okay."
You see, the apes have been purchased by this porno kingpin who puts them up in a house..... heyyyyy ape house.... I get it now.... our resident sleazeball then exploits the apes by putting them on TV and the internet as the stars of their own reality show. The show is called..... are you ready?.... Ape House. Bet you thought I was through making apes are in the house jokes, didn't ya?
The apes become television sensations as millions of Americans tune in to watch them
(I am not making any of this up!)
order food, throw pizza boxes, surf on unhinged doors....
But the main draw and primary selling point turns out to be the apes rabid sexual habits. This means that millions of viewers tune in so they can watch a bunch of apes fuck. Enthralling, I know.
I went into Ape House expecting a compelling and heart wrenching tale of beast and man and an in depth study of a complex and unique species of ape and what did I get? A bunch of apes fucking.
Needless to say, I wasn't at all thrilled by Ape House. The story is bungled all over the place. The mysteries of who is doing what and why are all cliched as hell. The characters just kind of mope around from page to page. Oh, and the ending sucks too. I thought the ending of Water for Elephants was lazy and much too fluffy. But this.... this is just madness. The story is conveniently sewn up in a flash and the apes have a brand new facility so they can fuck all day and night long and it's rainbows and candy canes for all who deserve them.
There is no romance. There is no suspense. There is no depth to any of the characters outside of the wish list for Amanda. Some of the scenes are just downright cheese-ball-ish-
Thigpen serenades his wifes voice mail with Mama I'm Coming Home by Ozzy because..... well, he is coming home at that very moment.
Thigpen also blasts one of the truly most vomitous songs in pop music history to annoy his neighbors. We Built this City by Starship. A fictional character, yes. But I seriously hate this guy.
Oh, you want more cheese? A meth lab that fronts as a pizza parlor, but doesn't seem to know that it should actually serve pizza, blows up across the street from Thigpen's hotel and a refugee pit bull wanders into his room to be found by wifey. She takes it home and they all live happily ever after. I love dogs and all, but I am going to throw up now.
Everybody that is bad is really bad here and there wasn't much in the way of surprises for me. The story wraps itself up with a bow and the whole thing pretty much made me want to throw the book against a wall.
I'm going to see Water for Elephants when it comes out at the theater. Mostly out of curiosity for how badly Hollywood will fuck it up. They always seem do that, don't they? If the movie does turn out to be remotely good I'll be pleasantly surprised.
As for Sara Gruen, I still think she is a good writer and maybe someday she will craft herself a masterpiece. She's got a long way to go though and for now I'm pretty much done with her. She has the chops. She just needs to work it a little better. Lose the filler. Maybe prioritize a little better. She did good enough with making magic in Water for Elephants. But after reading grape house she could maybe do with some wiser judgement on who gets the spotlight and who gets to sizzle on the backburner. I love her animals though. Maybe one day, if she can keep them out of beast orgies, she can get her animals to write better books for her.
****Original post date 1/2/2011****
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