A novel novel

The Woman and the Ape
A Novel
by Peter Hoeg
Picador, 2006
Review by Bob Lane, MA
Mar 11th 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 11)

Joseph Conrad in the preface to the Nigger of the Narcissus wrote:

The sincere endeavour to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on that road as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred by faltering, weariness, or reproach, is the only valid justification for the worker in prose. And if his conscience is clear, his answer to those who, in the fullness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand to be promptly improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must run thus: My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, before all, to make you see. That - and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm - all you demand - and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.

Peter Høeg's fourth novel is not easy to categorize. Robert Spillman has described it as "a feminist/animal-liberationist/futurist/social-disaster thriller." It is at once a tale of personal transformation, an ecological morality tale, a quest story, and above all a love story. Høeg, as evidenced in this English translation, succeeds admirably in just the way Conrad describes in the famous passage quoted above. The Woman and the Ape provides a moving story that will indeed make you hear, feel, and see. And, on the way to the exciting conclusion, you will experience a full range of emotions: delight, awe, shock, fear, wonder, and above all a sense of connectedness.

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