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pattydsf's review against another edition
3.0
“Courtland County bowed to Marie’s demands because the people there, like well-meaning decent and caring people anywhere, were loath to think of themselves as racists but also loath to think of race at all.”
“What I envy is not their skin but their insouciance. I envy the freedom to sin with only a little bit of consequence, to commit one selfish act and not have it mean the downfall of my entire people. Where indecency and mischief do not mean annihilation.”
This is my first Tournament of Books (TOB) for this year. It happened to be the only one available when I looked through the ebooks for my flight home from California. Given that it is the end of January, I don’t think I am going to manage to read all the titles. Eighteen books in one month is too many.
Once again, TOB has led me to a book that I probably would not have picked up on my own. For good or bad, I kept comparing this novel to Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. Given that, I don’t think I would have bothered to pick this tale up. I was convinced it was already familiar.
I was so wrong. Although there are echoes of Fowler’s novel, Greenidge has different concerns than Fowler did. Greenidge is tackling communication and how people hear each other in a different way than Fowler. Also her protagonists are African-American which change a great number of factors in the story.
Isn’t it amazing that two authors can take subject matter that has a lot of similarities and write such different stories? We all, writers and readers, bring our own lives to books and so each story has to be different. I would like to know more about Greenidge so that I could know more about why she wrote this novel. I believe it is obvious that she was thinking about prejudice and racism, but why did she use a family trying to teach a chimp sign language to tackle these issues of our society?
I am looking forward to the discussion of this novel during the TOB. It will be fascinating to see how the commentators view this story and the way Greenidge tells it.
“What I envy is not their skin but their insouciance. I envy the freedom to sin with only a little bit of consequence, to commit one selfish act and not have it mean the downfall of my entire people. Where indecency and mischief do not mean annihilation.”
This is my first Tournament of Books (TOB) for this year. It happened to be the only one available when I looked through the ebooks for my flight home from California. Given that it is the end of January, I don’t think I am going to manage to read all the titles. Eighteen books in one month is too many.
Once again, TOB has led me to a book that I probably would not have picked up on my own. For good or bad, I kept comparing this novel to Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. Given that, I don’t think I would have bothered to pick this tale up. I was convinced it was already familiar.
I was so wrong. Although there are echoes of Fowler’s novel, Greenidge has different concerns than Fowler did. Greenidge is tackling communication and how people hear each other in a different way than Fowler. Also her protagonists are African-American which change a great number of factors in the story.
Isn’t it amazing that two authors can take subject matter that has a lot of similarities and write such different stories? We all, writers and readers, bring our own lives to books and so each story has to be different. I would like to know more about Greenidge so that I could know more about why she wrote this novel. I believe it is obvious that she was thinking about prejudice and racism, but why did she use a family trying to teach a chimp sign language to tackle these issues of our society?
I am looking forward to the discussion of this novel during the TOB. It will be fascinating to see how the commentators view this story and the way Greenidge tells it.
catherine_louise's review against another edition
3.0
More like a 2.5- the first third of the book was great, later two thirds are predictable (but also kind of weird), including the big “twist” about the institute’s origins. The ideas of this book work better than its execution
keever1102's review against another edition
3.0
3 1/2 stars. It never quite hung together for me, but Greenidge's writing is beautiful. I'm looking forward to reading her next book.
jbolwerk8's review against another edition
2.0
This was another book where I was super intrigued by the concept and the book flap description, but I did not like the execution. This worries me, because this is adult fiction, and I felt the same way about the last adult fiction I read!
I think the narration could have stayed singular, and there were some weird topics touched on that either didn’t seem necessary (the breast feeding line) or didn’t come to fruition (the comparison of man to beast). It took me a long time to finish, but overall wasn’t an awful read...just not incredibly enjoyable. lol
I think the narration could have stayed singular, and there were some weird topics touched on that either didn’t seem necessary (the breast feeding line) or didn’t come to fruition (the comparison of man to beast). It took me a long time to finish, but overall wasn’t an awful read...just not incredibly enjoyable. lol
remigves's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
marie_gg's review against another edition
4.0
http://mariesbookgarden.blogspot.com/2017/01/we-love-you-charlie-freeman.html
I was drawn to this book after reading We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves the year before, another novel about a family raising a chimpanzee like a child.
We Love You, Charlie Freeman was far more ambitious, because not only did it tackle the issue of animal rights, science, and ethics, but it also addressed racism, bullying, family dysfunction, and childhood obesity, and interlaced historical fiction with the more recent past.
The (African-American) Freeman family moves to the shrouded-in-mystery Toneybee Institute to be part of an experiment: they would adopt a chimpanzee into their own family. Charlie Freeman, like most chimps, is hard to love and decidedly not human. Each family member reacts to the odd situation differently. The mother, Laurel, throws herself into the experiment completely, neglecting her own family while developing an unhealthy attachment to Charlie. The husband withdraws. One daughter retreats into her own intense friendship with another girl, while the youngest feels alone and abandoned and resorts to food as comfort.
Intertwined with the Freeman family story is that of Nymphadora Jericho, a young woman in the 1920s who is part of the Toneybee Institute's past.
This disturbing, thought-provoking novel is still sticking with me. It doesn't shy away from asking the hard questions.
I was drawn to this book after reading We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves the year before, another novel about a family raising a chimpanzee like a child.
We Love You, Charlie Freeman was far more ambitious, because not only did it tackle the issue of animal rights, science, and ethics, but it also addressed racism, bullying, family dysfunction, and childhood obesity, and interlaced historical fiction with the more recent past.
The (African-American) Freeman family moves to the shrouded-in-mystery Toneybee Institute to be part of an experiment: they would adopt a chimpanzee into their own family. Charlie Freeman, like most chimps, is hard to love and decidedly not human. Each family member reacts to the odd situation differently. The mother, Laurel, throws herself into the experiment completely, neglecting her own family while developing an unhealthy attachment to Charlie. The husband withdraws. One daughter retreats into her own intense friendship with another girl, while the youngest feels alone and abandoned and resorts to food as comfort.
Intertwined with the Freeman family story is that of Nymphadora Jericho, a young woman in the 1920s who is part of the Toneybee Institute's past.
This disturbing, thought-provoking novel is still sticking with me. It doesn't shy away from asking the hard questions.
wolfsonarchitect's review
3.0
I agree with the reviewers that the author attempts too much and it is a mess. I appreciate her tackling the racist tradition of associating Blacks with apes.
megatsunami's review against another edition
5.0
Absolutely original and emotionally resonant without being heavy-handed or sentimental. Great use of history in what at first seems like a fairly contemporary setting. One of the best books I've read this year.