LIVES of the CHIMPS

Colin Mcadam balances the story of one adopted primate with a history of how humans treat our close relations

REVIEW

The subject is not new and one opens the pages of Colin McAdam’s third novel thinking about The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary and Born Free. McAdam interweaves two narratives, the unlikely-yet-content familial nucleus of the Ribkes and a portrait of The Girdish Institute, a primate research centre in Jacksonville, Fla., where Dr. David Kennedy observes the life of chimpanzees. Beautiful Truth moves between human and chimpanzee mind alike in each species’ quotidian existence: Judy’s mothering of Looee as she washes, changes and teaches him the basics of life as one would a child — “He had pale hands, black fingernails, a pale face and feet...There was a little boy’s body under there” — and the social world of the chimps at the institute, told from their unique perspectives.

The descriptions of the Ribke’s marriage, and the meaning Looee brings to it, are rich and beautiful. If anything, they form a narrative you don’t want to leave. One can feel their home on 12 acres in rural Vermont, and the very human need for purpose that Judy finds in her

Amost unlikely of sons. Looee feels fear when Judy is insecure and doesn’t like change in the house unless it comes from himself. From babyhood he sleeps between them and the inevitable bittersweetness Judy feels as she loosens her apron strings when Looee enters adolescence, including facing his increasing aggression, is palpable.

Of course, tragedy strikes. And when it does the line between human and animal are quickly redrawn. It’s to McAdam’s credit that Looee is such a living, breathing character, so rich in mind and trajectory that he elicits much empathy. That said, one might question the validity of Looee’s perspective and the painting of the inner world of a chimpanzee’s mind. How is Looee’s memory of home so clear? How does he know that he’d like to spend more time with a friendly neighbour, Mr. Wiley, with whom he occasionally shares a beer?

These questions raise a mirror to our own minds and souls, as does the juxtaposition of the Ribke’s home life with the chimps in the field institute at Girdish. Maybe one of the most striking aspects of the novel is what this juxtaposition illuminates. Whether animal or human, the basic patterns of everyday life, the repetition, the need for contact, affirmation and love, are the same.

Without questioning McAdam’s research into the primate mind, perhaps a more interesting aspect to his research is the trajectory of primate research as a whole, woven through the Girdish narrative from the early ’70s until the late ’80s — from the behavioural focus of early halcyon days a la Jane Goodall to the notso-good biomedical research beginning in the early ’80s as chimps are leased out to big pharma for drug development. McAdam’s descriptions are vivid and painful to read, but it is also one of the few places where the descriptions begin to feel heavy-handed, despite the fascinating detail of the use of primates in intensive drug research. There also can be an unevenness with the way multiple characters are introduced throughout the book, whether family friends of Judy and Walt or researchers at the Girdish.

Like all good family stories, this one, however unlikely the family, ultimately ends in a form of redemption for the Ribkes and Looee. There is an acceptance that nothing of their experience together — their basic, visceral, connection, including pain — was for naught. As Judy reflects, looking into the mirror years later “There was beauty in the loss of beauty ... To see herself as a body in the mirror, death in the middle of life, was to see a beautiful truth.”

A Beautiful Truth balances a lot. The quiet familial narrative of the Ribkes; the inner world of our closest related primates, chimpanzees; and the big questions both raise about family, humanity, parenthood and the line between human and animal. It might not always succeed, but with quiet grace it does make you think.

FOTOLIA