Reviews

• The Freeman family of Dorchester, Boston, has accepted a job at a rural research academy. Because all four family members speak fluent sign language, they’re perfect lab workers to teach an orphaned chimpanzee sign language at the Toneybee Institute, which specializes in teaching primates to speak. So they accept the job over they very young daughters’ objections. Because hey, obviously it’s just a job like any other, right? Arriving at the Toneybee, the Freemans find themselves the only Black family in Courtland County. The chimpanzee they’re hired to teach proves obstreperous and unwilling to learn. The White students at Courtland County High School, far from greeting Charlotte Freeman with the hostility she expects, seem largely indifferent. And, deep within the institute’s archives, Charlotte finds evidence that the research history is anything but benevolent. Debut novelist Kaitlyn Greenidge writes a story that, on one level, almost dares you to tease out the autobiographical elements. Charlotte Freeman, the first-person narrator who tells us about half the novel, is roughly Greenidge’s age, a displaced native Bostonian, and shares a smattering of other characteristics. Her primate language backstory includes elements people who enjoy reading science, like me, will recognize from genuine science. But in other ways, one gets the feeling this novel answers back to previous “great” literature. Charlotte Freeman, fourteen years old in 1990, shares characteristics with famous child narrators, like Holden Caulfield and Scout Finch: a heated childhood perspective, recalled by an adult. That’s just one moment I noticed celebrated White authors’ storytelling subverted by being retold from a Black perspective. You’ll undoubtedly notice even more. The Freemans have different responses to Charlie. While Charlotte considers him a nuisance and dislikes the inquisitive White research staff, her younger sister Callie throws herself wholly into being a chimp’s sibling and desperately tries to win Charlie’s love. Charles Freeman takes a day job teaching high school geometry, the only Black teacher some students have ever known. Laurel Freeman becomes Charlie’s full-time mother, which starts to blur some boundaries. Thrown outside their longstanding comfort zones, the Freemans find their identities disappearing into only one or two characteristics. Surprised by White classmates’ relative nonchalance, she discovers the only other black student in Courtland County; together, they test a mix of revolutionary politics and nascent sexuality. Charlotte’s story increasingly becomes about her deeply felt but directionless anger. She’s earned the right to be pissed off. While Charlotte’s school days are intricately described, Callie’s education basically doesn’t exist herein (which furthers my belief in Charlotte’s autobiographical qualities). Instead, Callie struggles to win Charlie’s affection, but measures love in human terms: Callie wants a baby brother, Charlie wants a fellow chimpanzee. In desperation, Callie turns to literal wizardry in an attempt to breach Charlie’s defenses. The parents start off loving and middle-class, but Charlie changes their dynamic. As Laurel’s life orbits permanently around Charlie’s unreasonable demands, Charles disappears into his day job, becoming a stranger. When a disastrous Thanksgiving dinner hastens a collision between the sacrifices Laurel makes for Charlie, and Charles’ brother’s Black Power rhetoric, all semblance of family returns to the dust it came from. Greenidge’s back-cover synopsis promises the Freeman family will discover shocking secrets inside the Toneybee institute’s history. Well, it’s a Black family in a mostly-White community, and we’re readers, we remember Tuskegee. We already know the discovery will be forthrightly racist. We enter the story with two questions: what will it be? And, how will the living handle learning the secrets the dead strove to conceal? (As anybody who has taken a postgrad creative writing workshop knows, Black issues are treated as “racial,” but White issues are “normal.” Greenidge plays with that expectation, to great profit.) One element I think gets short shrift, is sign language. Though the Toneybee Institute hires the Freemans because they speak fluent ASL, it doesn’t get discussed much in the book, besides a few orphaned references to Charlie mimicking the occasional sign. One wonders whether he actually understands what he’s saying; and one never quite finds out, because that story component doesn’t merit enough word count to matter. Notwithstanding that quirk, Greenidge creates a story of how the need to make a living, and get along in the world, changes people, in ways they usually couldn’t have predicted. The characters undergo their respective journeys and emerge, in unique ways, changed. The novel isn’t “about race,” but it’s definitely tinged by racial experience, which readers will receive their own ways. Because we, too, are changed by the Freemans’ journey.

• This novel quickly went from very good to fantastic. The premise and sample interested me immediately--an African American family who speaks sign language(s) moves to a scientific institute as part of a study to see if chimps (one in particular, the titular Charlie) can learn to sign. At first it feels almost quirky; the first point of view we're given is that of Charlotte, the older of two daughters in the family. She is not happy about her parents' decision to move the family from Boston to rural New England. But as soon as they arrive at the institute, it's clear something with this situation will not be kosher. Much of the book you wait for the other shoe to drop, and as soon as additional points of view from the past and present emerge and repeat, that dread becomes specific until the reality confirms it. Each family member relates to Charlie--or doesn't--in their own way. Charlotte is standoffish and more concerned with fitting in at the almost entirely white school she begins attending--a hallmark of the town's past (and present) segregation. She begrudgingly becomes friends with the only other black girl and hangs out with her and her mother, who both appear to be radicals. Younger sister Callie is left to her own devices and does her best to be a "big sister" to Charlie; in the meantime, food becomes her comfort. Mother Laurel has the tightest bond with Charlie--too tight, as Charlotte first discovers. Father Charles loves math and Laurel, and his devotion to her is tested by her bond with Charlie. Alongside the family drama come flashes of the past when the institute first opened. The lens is that of a black woman who begins a disastrous relationship with one of the institute's scientists--a man who proclaims he does not believe white people are biologically better than black people but whose slowly revealed study of local black people proves otherwise. Past and present merge and culminate in one bizarre Thanksgiving dinner, followed by a telling letter written by the institute's foundress (I'm making this word up). The novel presents one of the most nuanced contemporary portraits of race in America that I've read. Everything stems from the characters, who are deftly drawn, and the structure and lovely prose make it an engaging and subtle read.

• Great story , bravo first novel . Book arrived in excellent condition by Dragonfly .

• We Love You, Charlie Freeman," is a striking and original story that defies easy categorization. It blends themes of race, identity, family dynamics, and scientific ethics in a way that feels both daring and deeply insightful. The narrative focuses on the Freeman family, who are recruited to live at a research institute and raise a chimpanzee, Charlie, as part of an experiment in teaching him human communication. Greenidge masterfully navigates complex issues around race, particularly through the lens of the Freemans, an African-American family, who are placed in a deeply unsettling situation. The novel forces readers to confront uncomfortable questions about language, power, and exploitation, both in terms of race relations and the treatment of Charlie, the chimp. The parallels drawn between Charlie’s experience and the legacy of African-Americans in the U.S. are subtle yet powerful. The book’s exploration of language—how it connects and alienates—is thought-provoking and layered with meaning. The characters are compelling, particularly Charlotte, the teenage daughter, who provides a poignant perspective on the family's experience. The novel also delves into historical context, weaving in the institute’s dark past with scientific racism, adding further depth to the story. "We Love You, Charlie Freeman" is a compelling, complex, and bold narrative that challenges readers to think critically about race, communication, and the boundaries of empathy. Greenidge’s prose is sharp and evocative, making this a truly memorable and significant read. Highly recommended for those interested in socially conscious fiction with strong character development and meaningful themes.

• If your family was invited to adopt a chimpanzee, and treat him as a child or sibling, would you do it? In Kaitlyn Greenidge’s startling debut novel, the Freeman family do just that: they move into a Chimpanzee research institute on the “white side of town” and adopt Charlie, teaching him sign language in an effort to communicate with animals. “This car doesn’t feel like ours,” I said. “Well, it is now,” my father replied. “So get used to it.” Outside of the car it was dark and hot and early morning August in Dorchester. Though the crack of the window, I could smell every part of the city – every slab of asphalt, every rotten plank of wood siding, every crumbling stucco wall, every scarred and skinny tree – I could smell all of it beginning to sweat. I read an excerpt of this novel in the Algonquin catalogue and was intrigued by the premise. It did not disappoint: an African American family during the civil rights movement, working with chimpanzees. I was eager to see the family dynamic with the chimp. To be honest, I expected something a bit Doctor Doolittle-y, but with a dose of social awareness on top of it. This novel is nothing like that. Instead, it focuses on the elder daughter’s perspective, as she watches her family rise and fall as a result of their involvement in the experiment. It also switches back and forth with Nymphadora, a woman in 1929 who is also involved in experiments at the Chimpanzee research institute. The juxtaposition of the stories raises some difficult questions. What I envy is not their skin but their insouciance. I envy the freedom to sin with only a little bit of consequence, to commit one selfish act and not have it mean the downfall of my entire people. Where indecency and mischief do not mean annihilation. I envy that their capacity for love is already assumed, not set aside or presumed missing, like it is for us Negro women. Greenidge’s writing style is subtle and authentic, and the words disappear as you are immersed in the story – a sign of good writing. She is able to convey a strong political message without being didactic: the complexity of the situation slowly reveals itself and the reader is left to make her own mind up about the ethics or morality of it. I liked that it made me think, and it also made me question my own preconceptions and prejudices. One of the most important things Mumma drilled into me was never to let a white person think that they knew you. In Spring City, Mumma and Pop and all the other Stars and Saturnites were planets, possessing deep and mysterious seas, complicated deserts, forests of knowledge and pain. but step across the border into Courtland County and they were little more than rocks, pebbles really, to the white people that lived there. Small and insignificant, without the weight or density to command even the smallest orbit. Mumma told me that this underestimation was an advantage. It meant you could do things white people would never even know about. Your invisibility was your power. While I gained insight into Nymphadora and Charlotte’s minds, I was less able to connect with the background characters – Charlotte’s father, mother and sister. It meant that I was less emotionally affected by what happened to them. Consequently, the dramatic climax of the novel was less dramatic, to me, and seemed to be cast behind a hazy smoke; it was rushed and could have been a little better. This was the one thing about Charlie that had fascinated him: did chimpanzees, like humans, contain a multitude of selves? When he’d raised the question with Laurel, playfully, one night early on in the experiment, as they lay before sleep, she’d gotten indignant. “Of course they do,” she’d sputtered. But the way she’d said it, it was obvious she hadn’t thought of it before, was only defending this answer because she loved Charlie and couldn’t bear to think of him as different from herself. The strength of the novel is in the complexity of the ideas. Our connectedness to others, of different races and different species, based on love, as it clashes with the prejudices that led people to mistakenly place each other in categories of consciousness or awareness, without ever trying to communicate or understand each other. It is, primarily, a novel about communication and what happens when communication breaks down because of false assumptions. That was, perhaps, the source of their cleaving in a nutshell. Laurel could not conceive of anyone that she loved as not being of the same mind as her. That is what she’d said when he’d raged at her about it all… “I never asked because I thought you would agree, Charles. I thought we were of the same mind.” Himself, he knew he could love those of a different mind, but even he had his limits. This was an excellent debut novel, and I would put it on recommended reading lists for high school students, college students, or book clubs – there are plenty of interesting aspects for discussion and it is absolutely a novel that needs to be part of our conversation.

Purchase links