Ape House

Ape House By Sara Gruen Isabel Duncan is a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab. The bonobo's she works with have become her family. They are incredibly human like and communicate through ASL (sign language). She is engaged to the director of the program, Peter Benton and her assistant Celia is a pink haired, off the wall punky intern that speaks her mind and follows her instincts. The lab is bombed. The explosion severely hurts Isabel and the intruders steal the bobobo's to ultimately put them on a bizarre reality tv show. What begins as an intellectual look inside the world of the ape/man understanding quickly turns into a two bit who dunnit mystery. Page after page the reader waits for the depth, descriptiveness and magnificence of the characters that we met in Water for Elephants. Sadly, this moment never arrives. The reader barely cares about each quirky character. The story is all over the place and on the road to nowhere. It is as if another author wrote this book and put Ms. Gruens name on it. :(