A Beautiful Truth - Hardcover

Praise for "A Beautiful Truth""McAdam's language reaches into that mysterious place where a word ends and a feeling begins." A Beautiful Truth" is a story about love and beauty and our dreams for our children and our inescapable loneliness. The characters, human and animal, are sad and honest and true. I could not put this novel down, and only when I finished it could I breathe again."--Kim Echlin, author of" The Disappeared ""A work of exquisite sensitivity and prowess, McAdams' tale is of two species astride not a divide but a continuum, of our longings and resiliencies and the fate we share: being stronger than we are evolved."--Alex Shakar, author of "Luminarium" "Haunting. Heartbreaking.... it is a tale of empathy and honesty, deftly told and beautifully rendered."--Will Ferguson, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of "419" The portrayal of chimpanzees as individuals with memories isn't just a fictional device; the commonality of human and chimpanzee conceived here is achieved not by eliminating the traits that divide them but by illuminating the differences that unite them.... With concise language, this heartbreaking tale of loneliness and remembrance reminds us that understanding is a process of growth and experience."--"Library Journa"l, STARRED REVIEW "As brutal as it is compassionate, "A Beautiful Truth" collapses the gaps between humans and chimpanzees, bringing us ever closer to the recognition that what we do to the chimps in our care has the moral power to indict us or to set us free, for in so many ways they are us and we are them."--Matt Bell, author of "In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods" "[A] sure-handed and mature work, expertly weaving together shifts in voice and point of view and making use of a poetic language full of direct, sensual metaphors.... There are no platitudes about the power of love and our need to feel for one another, but rather an unde

Walt and Judy's happiness has been blighted by their childlessness; although their marriage seems blissful, Judy feels increasingly empty and Walt longs to make her happy again. So one day he brings home Looee - a baby chimpanzee. Looee, exuberant and demanding, immediately fills the gap in Walt and Judy's life, and they come to love him as their own son. Like any child, Looee is affectionate and quick to learn, generous and engaging. But he is also a deeply unpredictable animal, and one night their unique family life is changed forever. At the Girdish Institute, chimpanzees have been studied for decades to prove that they are political, altruistic, often angry but also capable of forgiveness. The chimps at the Institute travel a parallel path to Looee's; they experience friendship, loss and rivalry, just as he does. When these two paths meet, startling truths are revealed about all great apes, captive and free, beloved or abandoned.Told alternately from the perspective of humans and chimpanzees, A Beautiful Truth is a profound and gripping story about the things we hold sacred and the truths of nature we so often ignore.