Poignant, hilarious, psychedelic and deeply rooted in other-than-human intelligence. Read it and laugh, then cry for all we stand to lose if bright, intelligent non-human animals no longer live alongside us.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Genre: Fiction, Comedy, Animal Advocacy, Climate Activism
Publisher:
Review in one word: Psychedelic
I’ve never read a book that so riveted me right from the very first sentence. The structure, language and storytelling of this book are completely unorthodox.
Beep is told from the perspective of a small squirrel monkey living in Costa Rica’s dense jungle. The tale charts the high-octane adventures of the eponymous Beep as he travels around the world and witnesses first hand the human-caused chaos of capitalist growth, large cities and tropical deforestation of his home in Central America.
One day Beep dares to cross out of the jungle into a tourist accomodation to beg for food. There he befriends a young teenager named Inga on holiday with her family. The two become besotted with each other and Inga smuggles him in her hand luggage back home to NYC.
The style of Bill Roorbach’s writing, right from the beginning is shot-gun fast, like a staccato chirrup of a troop of monkeys attempting to talk to you in hyperactive sentences. This is a deeply compelling and convincing voice. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve read a book in the “voice” of an animal that I completely bought into, embraced and absolutely loved.
You-men = human
Moodle = to connect with another being but in a telepathic way without words.
Roller = car
Wub = love
There is also a really trippy telepathic vibe as narrator-monkey Beep senses and “moodles” with awareness, all other plant and animal beings around him. It’s quite wild and psychedelic!
“And there arose a vibration, a thought moving through not only the trees but all things green, and all things. The forest always knows you’re coming, and that’s how the rocks know, and so the lichens, the mosses. First, I was led to understand something: many of the trees were still asleep from the cold season. The acidic ones were wide awake, though, and needled me: “You’re a squirrel monkey. We’ve known your kind. Tiny and trusting.” They knew, too, that I was on a quest. “You’ve taken the detour that is yet your path” was the message, typical tree stuff.”
Beep by Bill Roorbach
One particular scene in the book is incredibly haunting. It’s when Beep is taken to Bronx Zoo in New York City by his “You-men” friend Inga to visit the captive animals there. The thoughts of this wild monkey about the stir-crazy prisoners of the zoo are raw and incredibly sad:
“The Bronzoo, as far as I could make out, was a prizzon for animals across the genera, including (more or less) the you-mens who worked there. The horrible smells were produced by prizzoners so sick they’d gone mad. But Inga was charmed, calmed by a striped horse called a zzebra who’d rubbed all the hair off his rump circling his overly small enclosure (in the wild, there’d be miles!).”
Beep by Bill Roorbach
I was distracted by a crazy-huge white animal emerging from some neighboring rock, shifting from paw to paw, groaning and muttering: “I am Polar Bear, once great, once fearsome. I am Polar Bear, miles did I roam. I am Polar Bear, once great, once fearsome.” And repeat, gone mad.”
Flee monkey, flee, the Japanese [macaques] called. I swung myself over a railing and then onto the rooof over the crazy polar bear. “Flee!” even he cried. “For as I was once free you must remain.”
And so, via a series of branches, all while avoiding death-tendrils, I made it to the top of the bird enclosure. “I’ll be back,” I shouted down from there. “We will free you one and all.” And the zzoo burst into squawks and roars and chittering.”
For reference here are some images I took of some incredibly miserable looking animals in Warsaw Zoo years ago. It would be the very last time I would ever visit a Zoo – these are places of deep sadness and mourning for living beings who long to be wild.
Along the way we are able to see a tantalising, curious and surreal view into how a small monkey might perceive and understand a human family. This description of Beep curiously analysing his adopted “you-men” family is endearing and vividly rendered. In some alternate universe it rings authentic and true.
“Momma, and Dabby, and of course the foolish baby. But there was Inga, too, in various sizes. How slowly the you-mees grew! I felt tenderness toward her and toward her tiny troupe. I studied the representations, the forced you-men grins, the awkward postures. How hard it must be to live in the middle of the crossing [Manhattan] and pretend such happiness lest their gods find them ungrateful!”
Beep by Bill Roorbach
I won’t reveal what else happens in this book, as I don’t want to ruin the narrative arc for you, which is extremely satisfying and enjoyable. However, I will say that for a book that appears on the surface to be a bit babyish, childlike, innocent and silly there is a lot going on under the hood in terms of its philosophical, ethical and political messaging. But it’s extremely subtle and easily overlooked if you are merely after a good-time read.
Roorbach manages to elegantly and humorously make you the human reader eject yourself out of your human skull for a while and suddenly inhabit the brain of an intuitive, empathic simian who “moodles” and understands other beings (human and non-human) using his preternatural emotional intuition. This is the natural realm of all non-human animals who sense and understand each other deeply and understand danger, love and other emotions in ways beyond human words.
“I missed Inga. Inga could feel me, I sensed, even at distance, and I felt her, felt her growing closer, curious. Inga had tried, and cared, and considered, and learned. What would become of my Inga? Was a worry.”
Beep by Bill Roorbach
This is a work of speculative fiction with a huge poetic licence, but its based on solid science about animal communication, behaviour and intelligence. It’s a critique of capitalist excess and rampant destruction of nature. It’s nature talking back to us but in a moving, funny and gentle way, so as not to scare the reader who is wilfully ignorant of the destruction of the planet.
There is a unique genius to this book that can’t really be adequately described unless you read it. I hope you will. Any animal lover will be amazed by this book.
To close it out, here’s a conversation between Beep and his monkey companion. Their language is peppered with insight into the ridiculousness of the human species and our need to dominate everything.
“We laughed because we were not you-mens erecting whole citty blocks of brights to the proposition. And we’d heard they’d found ways to blockade the whole point of mating, which was making wee-bees, their one gesture toward self-control, and yet so many of them! We laughed because we found each other funny. We laughed because we found each other very serious. We slept, chastely knotted together in my fayb-fayborite sort of tree, a wrestling-fig, with its broad branches and excellent sight lines, multiple trunks.”
Beep by Bill Roorbach
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