Ape House - Softcover

Superb * The Sun * It's a very addictive read . . . I thoroughly enjoyed it. * TheBookBag.co.uk * 'Gruen writes about her animal characters with energy and empathy. . . . [she] has a lovely, noticing eye. Fron tiny silver flecks drifting off champagne cork foil, to a dogbowl sliding away from a rescued pit bill, there is plenty of surface detail to detain the reader.' * Financial Times * 'enlightening and believable' * Guardian * 'Ape House is a moving account of a close bond between human and ape - and human and human too.' * Take a Break (Fiction Feast) * Propulsive... Gruen writes with the commercial breathlessness of a cozier Dan Brown. * Entertainment Weekly * Gruen delivers a tale that's full of heart, hope, and compelling questions about who we really are. * Redbook * The biggest accomplishment of Ape House is that it brings bonobos to life. The writing is effortless, as though Gruen sat down and wrote the book in one breezy afternoon. * Vanessa Woods, New Scentist * Ape House is difficult to put down, filled as it is with genuine hilarity and heartbreak. * Toronto Star * Has the dramatic tension of a crime thriller... Twists and turns, lies, and treachery abound in this funny, clever, and perceptive story. * Library Journal (starred review) * Consider reality TV, meth labs, over-the-top animal-rights activists, Botox, tabloids and Internet diatribes, and you, too, might come to the conclusion: People should be more like animals. Sara Gruen's entertaining, enlightening new novel will certainly leave you thinking so. * Miami Herald * Very, very few novels can change the way you look at the world around you. This one does. * Robert Goolrick, author of A Reliable Wife * It is a page-turner written with flair, imagination and a sharp sense of irony. * Globe and Mail * Gruen's astute, wildly entertaining tale of interspecies connection is a novel of verve and conscience - the fate of the bonobos is a brilliantly satirical surprise. * Booklist (starred review) * had me instantly enraptured * Dallas Morning News * If you love animals like I do, it's a must read. * Ellen DeGeneres, host of the Ellen Show * Ape House is gripping, emotionally exhilarating and, by a large margin, the best novel I've read in the past 12 months. Or perhaps 24.... A twisting pacy plot . . . vivid page-turner . . . mining the same literary vein as Jodi Picoult and TC Boyle whose strong, conflicted characters and ethically charged plots deliver brilliant but challenging fiction. * James Urquhart, Independent * DON'T MISS YOUR BUS STOP . . . reading this week's talking-point book, Ape House by Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen. It's a funny, provocative lampoon of pop culture, about a group of sign-language-speaking bonobo monkeys who are liberated from a science lab, only to wind up on a reality TV show. * Grazia *

The New York Times bestseller - of how six bonobo apes change the lives of three humans, from master storyteller Sara Gruen, author of the international bestseller, Water for Elephants. These bonobos are no ordinary apes. Like others of their species, they are capable of reason and carrying on deep relationships - but, unlike most bonobos, they also know American Sign Language. Isabel Duncan, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab, doesn't understand people, but animals she gets, especially the bonobos. Isabel feels more comfortable in their world than she's ever felt among humans . . . until she meets John Thigpen, a very married reporter who braves the ever-present animal rights protesters outside the lab to see what's really going on inside. When an explosion tears apart the lab, severely injuring Isabel and 'liberating' the apes to an unknown destination, John's human interest piece turns into the story of a lifetime.