May 10, 2016

We Love You, Charlie Freeman - Kaitlyn Greenidge


Algonquin Books, March 8, 2016.

Four Stars



The Freeman family have been given a unique opportunity. They were invited to the Toneybee Institute in rural Massachusettes in order to study the behavior of chimpanzees, and one chimp in particular – Charlie. The Freemans already have two daughters, teenage Charlotte and nine-year-old Callie, and Charlie is quickly welcomed into their family. They live in the institute, alongside Charlie, ostensibly observing his behavior. However, Charlotte finds some information that leads her to believe they may all be a part of the Toneybee’s experiment.


The Freemans are black, and they have suddenly been transplanted into an almost entirely white community. Charlotte especially struggles with her sense of identity, as she tries to fit in while preserving and celebrating her differences as well. In her search to understand her role within the Toneybee research project, she discovers an old book that exposes the Institute’s questionable past – it is a study of black people in the 1920s, and one woman in particular, who was put on display and studied much like Charlie the chimp. This woman’s perspective alternates with the Freeman family throughout the book, making the novel an examination not only of chimp-human relations, but also a study of race. It asks what ultimately makes us human, and whether our human similarities are enough to overcome the concept of race.


This novel is also very much an exploration of family – it looks at marriage, sisterhood, and the bond between a parent and child. The Freemans and Charlie communicate using sign language, which creates obstacles in getting their point across – however, the human Freeman family struggle more with communication amongst themselves. Both Charlotte and Callie find themselves competing with the chimp for their mother’s attention, which affects the girls even into adulthood. They are constantly searching for language to express their emotions, and much is lost in translation. The characters have very realistic reactions to their unusual situations, and so their endings are not always happy ones.


The obvious comparison to this novel would be Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves – the main premise is the same, but this novel becomes a larger, all-encompassing story. It situates the chimpanzee interactions in a broader time and place, using questionable anthropological research to explore ideas about race. Greenidge’s perspective is unusual, and it really makes you think about the psychological implications of both the Freeman’s experiment, and the earlier study.


There is a lot of psychological tension because so much goes unsaid between the characters. At the start of the novel, the Freemans are a tight-knit family, but as their experiment progresses, there are multiple secrets kept from each and every family member. I found the Freeman family sections completely compelling, and Charlotte was easily relatable. The flashback sections were more difficult to become immersed in; however, they are also more difficult in subject matter, and necessary to the novel – I just felt like maybe there was another way to deal with those sections. Regardless, this was an intriguing, thoughtful novel that everyone should read.


I received this novel from Algonquin Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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