We Love You, Charlie Freeman

January 18, 2016
Greenidge’s ambitious debut novel is the multiperspective story of the Toneybee Institute, a converted music school in western Massachusetts ostensibly specializing in fostering communication between chimpanzees and humans. The Freemans—Laurel, Charles, and their two daughters, Charlotte and Callie—are a family recruited to the institute from the Boston area in 1990 on account of their skill at sign language, the methodology chosen for a new experiment. Although no members of the family are deaf, Laurel learned sign language at a young age as a result of her distrust of spoken language, growing up in Maine as the only black girl in a hundred-mile radius, and she has passed along this method of communication to her daughters. At the Toneybee Institute, the Freemans welcome a chimpanzee named Charlie into their family and begin an effort to earn his trust and, eventually, teach him to speak. Narrated mostly by Charlotte, a high school freshman, the story moves back and forth in time as we learn the secrets of the institute’s disturbing and shocking past. The narrative structure is somewhat schematic, the pieces fitting together almost too perfectly as information is withheld to provide tension. However, the themes of communication across differences is nonetheless deftly constructed, encompassing weighty issues such as race, language, sexuality, and the intersections of religion and science, arriving finally at a heartbreaking confrontation. The end result is a sobering look at how we communicate with one another and what inevitably gets lost in translation.

Three narrators narrate this complex novel about a black family that was asked to participate in a 1990 experiment to teach sign language to a chimpanzee. The story is told from alternating viewpoints, and the narrators' empathetic, solid performances provide clear distinctions among the perspectives and time periods. Cherise Boothe's portrayal of teenage Charlotte is infused with sass and angst, highlighting the girl's rocky adjustment to living in a research institute with an ape. In a change in timeframe to 1929, Myra Lucretia Taylor highlights a middle-aged woman's fragile pride and disillusionment after she becomes involved with one of the institute's founding researchers. The remaining sections are read by Karole Foreman, whose soothing voice offers a pleasant foil to those of the main characters. This audiobook explores issues of race, sexuality, family, and research ethics. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine