Beep
A Novel
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An ebullient, funny, and hugely original novel told from the perspective of Beep, a squirrel monkey who—with the help of a brilliant young girl— forges the way forward for a planet in crisis.
In this immensely enjoyable and wise novel, it takes a sweet and personable squirrel monkey, Beep, to help us see the world we live in more clearly. While intending only to go deeper and higher into the Costa Rican rain forest to find a mate, he instead meets Inga, a kindly American tween on vacation with her family. Inadvertently, Beep travels to Manhattan with Inga. With her devoted help—and a bit of inspiration from a visiting Greta Thunberg, along with a dramatic zoo liberation—Beep manages to change the destiny of the world. He even finds his monkey love. Along the way, a vast cast of engaging and perceptive animals have a great deal to say about humanity and the divisions among us, our alien cities, our strange practices, our folly, as well as our beauty, and our promise, unfulfilled.
For fans of Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures and Dave Eggers’s The Eyes and the Impossible, Beep is full of humor, inspiration, and remarkable new ways of understanding how we live. Urgent but never earnest in the face of the increasing threats to our planet, Beep the monkey inspires us all to stop being the problem and start being the solution, loving and laughing all the way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the uplifting latest from Roorbach (Lucky Turtle), a girl and a monkey forge a life-altering friendship. The narrator, Beep, a restless squirrel monkey in a Costa Rican rainforest, leaves his family and sets out to find a mate, climbing his way toward a smoking volcano. There, he meets a girl named Inga, who's visiting with her family from New York City. She feeds him pineapple before stowing him in her bag. The two communicate via grunts and agree that Inga will smuggle Beep home to Manhattan. Beep gets his footing there after chatting with squirrels in Central Park, dodging dogs, and, together with Inga, emancipating the animals on display at the Bronx Zoo. Amid the commotion, they take shelter behind the robes of two Buddhist monks, who impart advice to them about the value of loving and respecting all animals. As Beep's relationship with Inga deepens, he learns more about himself and the world around him and resumes his quest to meet a mate. Roorbach maintains a steady supply of entertaining wordplay, as Beep phonetically reproduces what he overhears ("ladies and gentleman" comes through as "labies and genitalmen"), and the portrayal of Beep and Inga's friendship convinces. Animal lovers will savor this.
