"I already had one gold D on my jacket. People with two ... were fully fledged humans"
By sally tarbox on 14 December 2016
Format: Kindle Edition
Narrated by a gorilla, he tells of his dim memories of life before capture: the heat, catching termites, swinging from the branches with others of his troop. Then he was drugged and taken to the New World: and here the reader will immediately see parallels with slavery, as the animals are roped together and transported in filth, the feebler specimens eradicated on the way.
A totally new life opens up as he begins to work at Dreamworld, a vast, Disneyesque extravaganza. The gorillas are taught to behave like humans, to dress, to speak and to socialize. Any animal who falls short of the necessary perfection just disappears. But for those who conform, there are perks - a flat, a mobile phone, ribbons to befit their rise in the ranks. Again there are parallels with all of our lives, as society trains us to fit in, to make small talk, to follow certain standards - with the risk of being 'cut off' if we go against the norms.

It's a clever concept; but I can't say I enjoyed it particularly, despite recognising its literary merit. ( )

A novella narrated by a gorilla, forced into a recklessly accelerated evolution, ends up working at an amusement park. The book is as strange as it sounds, and there is a huge amount to be read into its mere 120 pages. At least the following are touched upon: ego versus id; disneyfication; colonialism; child-rearing; slavery; refugees; the immigrant experience. But while there appears to be an unstoppable momentum to civilise, above all the book reminds us that this can fall away at a moment, and that we still need the more fundamental simple things (family, love, perspective, quiet, beauty, ...) to make our lives meaningful and humane.

This is the first in Peirene Press's 2016 series themed around "fairy tale: end of innocence" and is translated by David Colmer. I can't think of a better fit to the theme: a dark otherly literary tale, rich in meaning, which is both of the modern age and of all human time. ( )