Interesting idea with an interesting concept. It felt like a re-telling even when it felt unique. But the story is a bit slow. I like the idea of talking with animals - even if I'd hoped it had branched out a bit. I always wonder what my dog is thinking! Although I know many have been taught sign language, I always find it fascinating. But I worry when we place more human feelings onto something that has different instincts and ideas. It's better to listen and learn than assume and decide we know. I think this is my first by this author and I would definitely check out more. I found the story compelling even without mystery or thrills.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

Refreshing, sometimes raw, most times ironic, always a joy reading Mr. Boyle's cutting edge, California creative stories.

I generally like books by T.C. Boyle and was interested in reading this one. But, try as I hard as I might, I could not get into it. I started and stopped several times. Others may enjoy it, but I didn’t.

<B>PEARL RULE @ 32%</b>

Gertrude Trevelyan's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17289228-appius-and-virginia" target="_blank">Appius and Virginia</a> in the twenty-first century. She was riffing on <I>Frankenstein</i>, and honestly just about everything that riffs on Frankenstein these days sets off resistance responses in me. We're busily destroying the planet with the hubris Mary Shelley wanred us about two hunded years ago, and if you're following in those footsteps, you'd best have something more urgent to say than this oft-told take on miscommunication and the essence of personhood being universal.

I gave up during the trip by car down to meet a woman <I>Tonight Show</i> producer wherein she's described as wearing enough mascara to paint a mural, the academic ponders his male privilege without seeing it, his assistant goes off with Sam the chimp and "cleans him up"...and then we go into an extended riff on how J. Fred Muggs stole Dave Garroway's fame which sent him spiraling into depression. Afraid it's going to happen to him...well, let's just say that I understand this isn't being played as a good person's musings but I just don't find it compelling when I'm aware, from long use, how this is going to play out as a plot. The execution is as always Boyle's selling point, and I wasn't sold.

YMMV, of course, but for me this isn't a hit.

If you are a fan of T?C. Boyle’s writing you may love this. I enjoyed the concept and how it reminds me of tFrankenstein, but some parts of the book dragged for me.

I very much appreciate being gifted this copy of Talk to Me
by T.C. Boyle, and the opportunity to read & review it. Thanks to the publisher.

All the trademark humor we've come to love from T.C. Boyle is packed into this adventurous, captivating and rascally new novel, and it's one of his shorter books. The question of humanlike intelligence among great apes species is one that preoccupies whole branches of biology and anthropology, but in this novel, Boyle offers a smart and witty layman's insight into this--all while developing a memorable love triangle between Guy Schermerhorn (animal behaviorist) and Aimee Villard (plucky undergrad) and Sam the chimp. Communication is a theme in Boyle's work (this is his second novel with TALK in the title, the other being 2007's TALK TALK), and here it is a theme with both literal and philosophical consequences. T.C. Boyle is such an inventive and original writer, you'll be glad to follow him wherever he goes--national TV, science lab, or the mysterious recesses of the animal brain. A bravura performance!

This was my first book by TC Boyle, and I look forward to reading more. This one really didn’t grab me. When I went to the zoo as a kid, I always went straight for the seals, penguins and polar bears. The monkeys were just an afterthought for me. I guess this was my own fault for picking up a book on a subject that didn’t captivate me. Thanks for me give it a try!

The opening chapter pulled me right in to the story -- it is so exquisitely written I felt like I was there. The characters are flawed and compelling - all with their own motivations on why they want to be involved with a chimp named Sam. Under the guises of "scientific research" or needing to feel wanted and loved, everyone projects their own needs onto this relationship. TC Boyle brilliantly alternates chapters with those from Sam's point-of-view, capitalizing words that Sam understands/can sign. This book shines a light on human's need to anthropomorphize animals (dressing up chimps like children or novelties on TV such as J. Fred Muggs. But what we humans forget is that these are still wild animals who cannot be controlled (makes me also think of Frankenstein's monster). This book is a dark, sad satire at times and other times quite humorous. It took me a while to read because I was concerned how it will all end. Definitely worth a read!

T.C. Boyle has made a career of turning both history and current affairs into fictions both horrifying and hilarious. TALK TO ME personalizes the ongoing efforts to communicate with our simian cousins and succeeds in engaging the reader fully in the emotional lives of researcher and ape alike. To resort to cliche, this book entirely tugged on my heartstrings. Boyle is a master writer for our changing times on a changing planet.

This read was a bit out of my comfort zone, I was quite scared and nervous to read it… but it was so good and I loved these characters!

I just could not get into this book. It was very obvious what was going to happen, which made it very boring. I didn't like that a professor took advantage of a student/employee.

4.5 stars
It’s been quite a while since I’ve read one of Boyle’s works, and Talk to Me makes a very good case for not waiting this long again. I read the ebook, and when I had to leave home, I listened to the audio. There were multiple times I would get to my destination and have to force myself out of the car because I was so engrossed in this book.

The premise and characters are completely captivating from the beginning. The relationships between characters and especially their different relationships with Sam, the chimpanzee, show varying levels of humanity and savagery. So well done.

I would unabashedly give Talk to Me five stars if it hadn’t jumped on the current bandwagon of multiple points of view. Even though Boyle executes the technique extremely well, it still feels a bit gimmicky and worn out by this point. Can we please just tell the story?

Thank you to T.C. Boyle, HarperCollins, and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Ecco for gifting me an eARC of this book via NetGalley to review. I have been pleasantly surprised with the other three books published by Ecco that I read this year, but I did not like this one. I should have DNF-ed it, but I held out hope that it would get better by the end. There was a moment when the priest got involved that I thought there would be something worthwhile, but the ending was just as bad as the rest of the novel. First of all, I hated the chapters from Sam the chimpanzee's POV. If the point of the novel was to debate the intelligence of this animal, it seems like it would have been way better to keep Sam's thoughts a mystery. Guy and his boss seemed to be caricatures of mysogonistic men of the time, which I was ok with, but I really didn't like that Aimee also seemed to be a caricature of a helpless woman. I hated how all the women were presented as weak. I was hoping that despite Aimee's outward appearance of weakness (Boyle uses question marks at the end of all her sentences to display upspeak, for example), we would find that she was actually strong, but I didn't find much of that in her character. Perhaps I missed something with this one, but all I can say is I would not recommend it.

Old Naples News
November 1, 2021

T.C. Boyle has come full circle with primates. In his first published book of short stories, the titular work, “The Descent of Man,” is a tale of an ordinary guy who loses his primatologist girlfriend to the romantic persuasions of a chimpanzee at her research facility.

Talk to Me is not that type of farce. Instead, it is an examination of the blurred lines between humans and our biological cousins. Guy Schermerhorn is a psychology professor at a fictitious coastal California university. It is the 1970’s and chimpanzee fever is at its peak. Based on the true stories of scholars who taught primates American Sign Language, Talk to Me centers on Guy, his undergraduate research assistant Aimee Villard, and a juvenile chimpanzee named Sam.

Guy Schermerhorn is ambitious. He wants to make a name for himself, and Sam is his catalyst. Aimee Villard is a young, apathetic college student until she sees Guy and Sam featured on a TV show. When she becomes Guy’s research assistant, she throws her whole self into the caring of this sometimes charming, always challenging chimpanzee. Sam knows many words of sign language and has been raised in a human household since he was two weeks old. A cross between a human toddler and a Tasmanian Devil, he’s a handful, to say the least.

Things get complicated when Guy begins a romantic relationship with Aimee. To make matters worse, his research funding is abruptly pulled, the study aborted. Sam will have to go back to his owner, the mercenary Dr. Moncrief, Guy’s mentor. But Aimee’s all-consuming love for Sam will test the bonds of all three in this tipsy triangle of relationships.

Boyle presents the reader with an interesting predicament: where do the minds of humans and chimpanzees overlap? Sam doesn’t know he’s not human, was raised like a human child, and knows no other life beyond Amy and Guy. With the maturity level of a toddler, can he be seen as something other than a chimpanzee? What will happen when he is torn from them and locked away at a research facility? And just what sense of self does Sam have? How far could his mind be expanded through the encouragement of humans?

The novel is told in alternating chapters from three points of view: Guy, Aimee, and Sam himself. In Sam’s chapters, the words he knows in sign language are in all capital letters for emphasis. At times humorous, at times deeply troubled, the tension always keeps the reader on edge. After all, a chimpanzee is decidedly not a human, yet physically powerful, and wholly unpredictable. Each character in the book sees Sam through a different lens, be it meal ticket, surrogate child, or lab subject.

What does it mean to be human? Boyle may not offer any definitive answers, but he asks the question in all capital letters.

I have read a couple of other TC Boyle books and enjoyed them -- I particularly enjoyed Drop City. I liked this book pretty well, but tired of it after a while because it started to feel repetitive -- hiding out with Sam, someone after Sam, Sam causing problems. Still, Boyle has a very engaging writing style, so I hung in there.

I have been a fan of T.C. Boyle since his earliest books in the nineties. I have been extremely impressed with this book and the one preceding it. To me, these two books are as good and compulsively readable as anything that he is ever written. I also found the subject matter of this novel fascinating. I will be recommending to many people.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I agree with other reviewers that this book isn't TC Boyle's strongest, I've read many of his books and this isn't my favorite. Maybe its the subject matter? I'm not sure but I wasn't able to connect with it like his others. The book is well written I just couldn't connect with it.

https://booktrib.com/2021/09/14/talk-to-me-shows-sign-language-may-be-the-key-to-communicating-with-our-favorite-animals/

If the measure of a good story is how often you think about it after you are done, then Talk to Me (Ecco), a new novel by T.C. Boyle, hits the mark. In fact, as I finished, I closed my eyes and let what I had just read wash over me, trying not to judge the characters’ morality — or lack thereof — but instead to feel the impact of having gotten to know them. This is not a happy tale, but it is one that will move you and make you think, which is something I always look for in a book.

Told through alternating narrators, Talk to Me follows the story of Sam, a chimpanzee taken from his mother as an infant and raised by Guy, a professor and researcher, as human. The goal of Guy’s research, initially, is to see if Sam can not only be taught to talk using sign language but also to think.

We meet Sam and Guy through Aimee, a college student who stumbles across them as they make an appearance on the television game show To Tell the Truth. Guy is telegenic and Sam is adorable, charming the cast and the television audience with his clothes and ability to answer questions. Shortly after, Aimee finds herself outside Guy’s office with a job offer to work with Sam at his ranch, provided the interview goes well.

AN INSTANT BOND

From their first meeting, it is clear that Aimee and Sam have a special connection. For Aimee, this quickly becomes more than a job; she is devoted to Sam and drops out of school to spend all of her time with him and Guy, who eventually becomes her lover.

The first section of the book is devoted to telling Sam’s journey through Aimee and Guy. It’s not until the second section that we are introduced to Dr. Moncrief, Guy’s boss and the professor who owns Sam. We learn that Sam is just one of several chimps who are being taught to communicate and live as humans in the hopes that this will reveal some higher-order thinking and reasoning. While Dr. Moncrief never narrates, his character is evident through his treatment of others, beginning with Sam and the other chimps at the Barn, the chimp research facility.

To say more would spoil the thoughtful layers of this story. As each character, including Sam, comes to learn more about the world, who has the power to make decisions for them and the impact of those decisions, we are forced to ask ourselves some questions: The straightforward variety like “What is right?” and “What responsibility do humans bear for their animal research subjects?” in addition to more complex queries like “What is the cost of fame, success and trust?”

LANGUAGE AND LOVE

While not a happy story, Talk to Me feels real and relevant because none of the characters are perfect. They each have motives driven by ego, identity, money and reputation. Like all of us, they struggle to understand love and expectations well as the accountability those two crucial factors bring to any relationship. And at its core, the novel reflects on both the value and limits of communication and our ability to hear and understand only what we choose to.

Near the end, Guy thinks, “it was his fault too for believing in something as absurd as the power of language to construct a world out of nothing.” Isn’t that something we all believe?

Published by Ecco on September 14, 2021

T.C. Boyle tells stories that that are entirely original. His novels showcase the diversity and absurdity of the human experience. In Talk to Me, his focus is on the quasi-human experience of a chimpanzee who has been raised as a human.

Boyle draws on the work of Jane Goodall, the television appearances of J. Fred Muggs, and the episodic rise and fall of a branch of psychology that studies chimpanzees to gain insight into human cognition. Talk to Me is set in the 1970s. Its star is a chimpanzee named Sam who was stolen from his mother in infancy, taken to a breeder in Iowa, and loaned to a psychology professor in California named Guy Schermerhorn. The professor raises Sam in a human environment, teaches him sign language, and hopes to propel himself to fame and academic stardom by having Sam appear as a guest on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.

Several of the chapters are written from Sam’s perspective. Boyle supplies the vocabulary that Sam lacks to capture the essence of his experience, his emotions and reactions, his joys and fears. Maybe Boyle stretches the ability of a chimp to engage in complex reasoning, but maybe he doesn’t. The point is, we can’t know a chimpanzee’s thoughts, which is why using them as research animals raises serious ethical questions about primate experimentation. A priest in the novel, convinced that Sam has a soul, even baptizes Sam — another stretch, perhaps, but if souls exist, who is to say that animals can’t have them?

We quickly learn that Guy’s wife has left him and that Sam isn’t adjusting well to her absence. Early in the novel, a student named Aimee Villard — an introverted young woman who isn’t sure what she wants to make of her life — sees Sam on To Tell the Truth and knows she wants to meet him. She applies for a job at the ranch where Guy is raising Sam. As soon as she arrives, Sam — who has been on a rampage and is about to escape — becomes calm and subdued. He bonds instantly with Aimee and she returns his affection. Aimee finds in Sam what she has never found in a human relationship. Guy is thrilled to have an assistant who can control Sam. He’s also happy that Aimee is pretty and quickly seduces her. Aimee is happy to have a sex life but is even happier that she can spend all her non-coital time interacting with Sam.

Guy is a self-centered jerk, but the novel’s primary villain is Donald Moncrief, a professor in Iowa who owns Sam. Conflict arises between Guy and Moncrief. Guy has staked his academic reputation on Sam, while Moncrief is certain that evolutionary psychology and primate studies are a dead end. Besides, Sam is getting too old to continue living as a human. Yet living as a human is all Sam has ever known. If part of that lifestyle goes against his instincts (he’d rather be climbing trees than sitting in a chair and answering Guy’s questions), his relationship with Aimee makes the tedium of a human lifestyle worth enduring. Like a human, Sam is motivated to make sacrifices in exchange for love and acceptance.

The story takes off when Aimee is separated from Sam. The scenes of Sam in a cage —not understanding how to live without Aimee, not understanding that he’s not a human, not understanding his relationship to the shrieking primates in neighboring cages — are powerful and affecting. The choices Aimee makes about Sam, including a very difficult choice at the novel’s end, are easy to understand and appreciate.

Boyle makes it easy to empathize with Aimee. Like Sam, although perhaps less selfishly, love motivates Aimee to make sacrifices. She wants to do what’s right for Sam, but the sacrifices she needs to make to let him live a meaningful life are overwhelming. Sam can’t be left unattended for a minute. His sense of humor, his curiosity, and his temper all motivate him to engage in acts that range from mild mischief to wholesale destruction. By the end of the novel, Aimee’s devotion to Sam is complete. She can have no relationships with humans. She can hold no ordinary job. She can’t continue her education. She can’t live in an apartment. But she perseveres because the alternative is to condemn Sam to a life in a cage, a life in which he is controlled by cattle prods, a life without love or fun or intellectual stimulation.

Talk to Me illustrates the difficult moral questions that surround scientific inquiry into animal behavior, as well as the philosophical questions that surround animal intelligence. Is there a difference in kind rather than degree between animal intelligence and human intelligence? Do animals have souls? Do people? If freedom is a cherished value for humans, why do humans feel entitled to put animals in cages? If most decent humans now regard slavery as fundamentally wrong, will a time come when decent humans believe it is wrong to cage animals?

Boyle’s prose is low-key, yet he occasionally delivers a sentence that shines: “In the evenings, he made the rounds of the bars, exploring what lack of purpose involved at its core.” Boyle proves again in Talk to Me that he is a masterful storyteller. The novel blends tragedy and offbeat comedy in a unique plot that is absorbing from beginning to end.

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