Out, Out

by Kim MacQueen

Deb Solomon is a new mom suffering a spate of postpartum depression, a listless marriage and a career in free-fall. So she jumps at the chance to go to work in another world: a university laboratory housing language-competent apes and the humans who study and care for them, led by brilliant primatologist Dr. Soraya Baldwin-Ruhl. But Soraya's star is already falling, and the lab's human inhabitants act increasingly apelike, even as the apes start to seem more human. Deb's own life soon spirals into a science soap opera as she follows Soraya further and further into madness.

214 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 2011

About the author

Kim MacQueen has been a fiction and nonfiction writer and editor for research, legal and general interest newspapers, magazines, websites and books since 1993, as part of a varied career that also includes stints as a research lab administrator, political/education/crime reporter and grant proposal writer. Her debut novel Out, Out is now available. She lives in Tallahassee with her husband Steve and their two daughters, Claire and Rose. And too many pets.

Reviews

[Sara Warner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, I absolutely love certain things about this novel: it is an insight into a rarely explored but I think not uncommon state of mind, it makes a faithful account of the damage that life bestows on most of us, it is at once whacky and profound, and it deals in an adult way with the issues of interspecies interchange. Like many first novels it holds back a little, or maybe it is more accurate to say it suffers from story-teller's ennui, which happens to authors when they lose a sense of how much and how little to say to fully convey the story. When you work a long time on a story and you already know the ending, the ending can get tricky to write, and get right. You lose your sense of the importance of the story's insights, and you can fail to fully render those insights. I think this has happened to some extent in Kim's novel, so that it leaves me wanting a fuller account of the fallout she has so successfully created and made me interested in. My other complaint is that the book needs a good edit. There are frequent word omissions that make the book seem amateurish when the writing is anything but that. Kim MacQueen has a gift for rendering fragile but pervasive emotional states and capturing the chaos of life. I felt so much of the protagonist Deb's pain, in her self doubt, her failing marriage, her obsessions, as conditions of everyday life for us all. At several moments in the book MacQueen treats us to the unadorned insights of her smart character. In the end, I wanted more of that. Maybe just a little more, but more. This writer is certainly one to keep your eye on.

[Kristi Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I had postpartum depression, it hit me like a slow-rolling boulder -- before I knew what had happened, I was floored by it and lying with the boulder resting on my chest. One of the reasons that I liked Kim MacQueen's Out! Out! is because I found the character of Deb to be an incredibly realistic portrayal of a depressed, confused, conflicted woman on the brink of...something. The something could have been anything, but in this case it was the crazy "dysfunctionality" of an ape research lab. The way the Kim MacQueen writes about the lab and all its various inhabitants -- human and ape -- was engaging and wonderfully humorous. Highly recommended reading!

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buy it! Read it!