Jennie

I will admit up front that I am a sucker for a chimp story. I think it's due in part to an overdose of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" and re-runs of Daktari at a very tender age. But this IS an excellent novel. Preston is one half of the team that wrote "The Relic" and several other great thrillers. this is much more gentle fiction than any of those. It is character and issue driven realistic fiction. Jennie is a chimp who is raised as a human child. The story is told as if it were a true history and the viewpoint is split. There are interviews (using sign language) with Jennie, exerpts from her "father's" book, newspaper articles, and other interviews. The story's flow is surprisingly smooth for all that. At turns funny and heart-breaking, Jennie won't leave you along once you pick this novel up. It's short, but block off some time...it's a page turner. And the denouement, while not surprising (what always happens when the wild enters surburbia?) is all the sadder for its inevitableness.

In real life in the 1960's, a number of experiments were performed in which an infant chimpanzee was raised as a child in a human family. In every case, the ape did astonishingly well until puberty, at which point its strength increased drastically and its moods became unmanageable. In every case, the animal died tragically. "Jennie" is a work of fiction based on these experiments.I'm astonished at the editorial reviews above. One actually describes the book as "cartoonish"? Did we read the same novel? If this is the way the book was handled in the press, then it's no wonder that it's out of print, and no wonder that the author has since resorted to writing "thrillers" that sell better.Jennie is one of the most haunting, intelligent books I've ever read. If you've ever wondered about the psychology of other creatures, or even whether they can be said to have a psychology, you should read this book. In particular, I appreciate that the priest character who befriends the ape is handled completely sympathetically, and not treated as a cruel "monkey trial" caricature. Indeed, the plot rarely takes the "obvious" route, even though the subject matter can lead it to only one possible ending.Disney did a TV movie based on it recently. The commercials made it look like a childish farce, and I couldn't bring myself to watch it.This book is an excellent read. I keep giving it to friends as gifts, and they invariably love it.

Preston uses the points of view of several different characters through their journals or scientific writings to give an account of the story of Jennie, a chimpanzee taken into captivity by an American scientist. Through these varied perspectives and with a touching story, Preston raises all sorts of questions about what sets humans apart from animals, where God fits into the natural world, etc...there's all sorts of fuel for thought. Excellently written, thoroughly researched, and an all out great book. I'm a more complex thinker for having read it, and I've recommended it to many of my professors and friends.

Jennie was truly one of the most heartbreaking books I have ever read. The title character, a chimpanzee, was as human as any person I have known. No one could come away from this book unaffected. I first read this book two years ago, and I am still haunted by it.

Rarely has a book moved me to feel so many different emotions. Jennie made me laugh, cry, and seriously think about the many issues that the book raises: Are humans more similar to animals than we think? What sort of moral or ethical obligations do we have to our animal friends? Are we right to personify these animals, even for good, if it means that we neglect their unique needs? What, if any, is the line between humans and our primate cousins, and is this line fixed or flexible? I strongly recommend this remarkable book to anyone that loves animals, ethics, philisophy, religion, or any discipline that causes one to challenge their preconceptions about the world around them. This is a great book.