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    The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
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    The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
    Unavailable
    The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
    Audiobook20 hours

    The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

    Written by Benjamin Hale

    Narrated by Robert Petkoff

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Bruno Littlemore is quite unlike any chimpanzee in the world. Precocious, self-conscious and preternaturally gifted, young Bruno, born and raised in a habitat at the local zoo, falls under the care of a university primatologist named Lydia Littlemore. Learning of Bruno's ability to speak, Lydia takes Bruno into her home to oversee his education and nurture his passion for painting. But for all of his gifts, the chimpanzee has a rough time caging his more primal urges. His untimely outbursts ultimately cost Lydia her job, and send the unlikely pair on the road in what proves to be one of the most unforgettable journeys -- and most affecting love stories -- in recent literature. Like its protagonist, this novel is big, loud, abrasive, witty, perverse, earnest and amazingly accomplished. The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore goes beyond satire by showing us not what it means, but what it feels like be human -- to love and lose, learn, aspire, grasp, and, in the end, to fail.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateFeb 2, 2011
    ISBN9781607886891
    Unavailable
    The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
    Author

    Benjamin Hale

    Benjamin Hale is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, a winner of a Michener-Copernicus Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, and shortlistee for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared, among other places, in Harper's Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Millions, and has been anthologized in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013.

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    Reviews for The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

    3.5/5

    75 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Let me start off by saying this book is not for everyone. It is bizarre, strange, quirky and totally enjoyable! Even though this novel has more than 500 pages I sped through it and couldn't put it down. The writing is superb and the descriptions are lush. I can not wait for this author to write another!
    • 5/5
      I don't know quite what to say about this book. I struggled deciding between 4 and 5 stars. I enjoyed it but was thoroughly exhausted at the end.

      The basic premise of the book is that Bruno is a chimpanzee who, over the course of his life, learns language and to speak and comes to think of himself as human.

      The writing is amazing. I was shocked to find that this is from a first-time author. I found myself using the dictionary feature of my Nook quite often. Actually, the book (and therefore the narrator, Bruno) were quite verbose. At some points I found myself spacing out and had to re-read paragraphs because there was just so much. This, however, is integral to the book. Because it is written from Bruno's point of view, the big words and lengthy descriptions only serve to reinforce Bruno's evolution from chimp to human.

      The plot was interesting although disturbing at several points. Bruno's life with Lydia was especially disturbing. I would actually love to read this story again only written from Lydia's point of view. What the hell was she thinking??

      This book is about so many things. At it's core it explores what it really means to be human but it also touches quite a bit on philosophy and humor and religion and theater and so many other things. It was exhausting mentally. I don't think my brain has had such a workout in years.

      There were parts of this book that I struggled to get through. The middle moved a little slow for me. Despite this, I give it 5 stars. It's just too good not to.

    • 2/5
      The WTF factor is strong with this one.

      The story of Bruno, a chimpanzee who learns how to speak and who slowly "evolves" into a man started out really strong. Bruno described the circumstances of his captivity and hints at the story that led up to his current condition. However, the story takes long, long, long time to tell, and Bruno is a somewhat less than reliable narrator. Well, either this, or Hale left out some relevant explanations of certain turns in the plot.

      While there is something clever about describing mankind from the perspective of a chimp and relating that evolution is not as big a step up from the animal kingdom as man would believe it to be, the story itself just isn't gripping me.

      DNF @ 37%.
    • 5/5
      What a superfantastic uberbrilliant ultramasterpiece of marvelous literature. What an amazing and full execution of an idea. What genius to make a near 600 page book feel like only the salient parts of the story are being told, so you feel like you're in brisk hurry-up mode as you fast forward through the delightful narrative. And the wordplay! Oh my! What amazing word choices and sentence structures and grammatical playfulness. It is truly a pleasure and experience to read this book - a debut, at that! Wow.
    • 3/5
      i was finished with this book before it was finished with me. i loved the premise: a chimp taught to speak, then engages in a love affair with his scientist/trainer. there's tragedy, comedy, heartbreak. but the evolution of bruno littlemore slowed significantly about 3/4 of the way. the book is approximatley 600 pages and i think at 450 i would have raved about it. at 600, i've tired of it. maybe those heartier than i will enjoy it all the way through. it is a pretty good story, for the most part. there was just too much of it for my attention span. good luck and enjoy!
    • 4/5
      This year, I have read a book narrated by Death, one narrated by an imaginary friend, and now one narrated by a chimpanzee. I bought The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore after seeing its author give a reading at my local independent bookstore, Prairie Lights. I was fascinated by the idea that the story is told by Bruno Littlemore, a chimpanzee who is looking back on his life and narrating his memoirs. From the first sentence, we can tell that Bruno is well educated and thinks quite highly of himself:"My name is Bruno Littlemore: Bruno I was given, Littlemore I gave myself, and with some prodding I have finally decided to give this undeserving and spiritually diseased world the generous gift of my memoirs." Hale does an excellent job capturing the world through Bruno's eyes, first as a child in the Lincoln Park Zoo, then as a research participant at the University of Chicago. I was fascinating with the way that Bruno described how he decoded what humans mean by a wave and how the good night waves of the scientists at the laboratory differed. But as Bruno evolves, becoming more and more human-like, he pushes against society's expectations of him. This tension worked for me. . . right up to the point where I felt like it went too far. I was willing to suspend disbelief up to a point, but there was a tipping point when the evolution went off the rails for me. At that point, Bruno was no longer an unreliable chimpanzee narrator. He thought of himself as a human, and with that became just another narrator. At the point, the story took several digressions as well, losing the tight focus of its beginning. The concept is intriguing, some of the writing is spectacular, but in the end, the execution fell short for me.
    • 4/5
      The chimpanzee Bruno Littlemore tells his life story. He goes through the the normal stages, family, leaving the family for the wider world, learning language, finding love and sex, losing love, learning to control his emotions, suffering for his deeds. He is a very thoughtful chimp as he becomes a human. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know him and confronting some of the issues around what makes us distinct among the animals.
    • 4/5
      Well, I don't know what to say about ths book! Did I like it? Well, yes and no. It certainly was not what I expected it to be. I have to say it was well written- but, it was parts of the story I found hard to swallow and ( although I do not consider myself a prude) a wee bit "out there." The author has a good way with words and the story I found comical and even sad at times but those "out there" parts ( which were major happenings in the story line) for me turned the whole pot sour. This is not a book I would recommend to any of my reading friends but I know there are many out there who probably will love this book. Alas, why they make both chocolate and vanilla as my mother use to say. :)
    • 4/5
      What does it mean to be human? How have we evolved from our possible knuckle-walking ancestors to upright, speaking, cultured, modern Homo sapiens? Bruno Littlemore is a chimpanzee rescued from a Chicago zoo and reared among humans at a research lab who longs to become human. At the age of 40, Bruno walks upright, speaks and reads, and even directs theatrical plays (albeit with mostly ape actors). How did this remarkable transformation occur? Bruno narrates his story and, most shockingly and tenderly, tells about his love affair with Lydia, the primatologist who took Bruno into her home.This novel is definitely flawed by its wordiness and over-descriptions (Bruno tends early on to spend pages describing his impressions of what to us are mundane things), and the third act when he leaves Chicago didn't work as well for me, but the writing is smart and the story always interesting. First time author, Benjamin Hale, is definitely a talent to watch. Bravo for Bruno!
    • 5/5
      I don't know whether I will read more than the first few chapters. I didn't like Peter H��eg's The Woman and the Ape and I thought this book would remind me of not only that but also of Lives of the Monster Dogs (which I shut after just a few pages) and Dogs of Babel (which I liked, because its talking dogs were only a small bit of plot). My problem with the book is entirely my own: my own individual blame plus the collective guilt of my species.

      P. 159. Gnome Chompy mightbe my favorite mondegreen since the Wool Pooh.

      P. 266 Comparing his and another chimp's circumstances, Bruno says, "If [not this], I would have surely would have wound up like poor Clever, trapped behind the half-silvered mirror of his mind." Wow.