Chimpanzee

by Darin Bradley

Unemployment has ravaged the U.S. economy. People struggle everywhere, exhausted by the collapse that destroyed their lives. Benjamin Cade is an expert in cognition, and before the flatlined economy caught up to him, he earned his living as a university instructor. Now, without income, he joins the millions defaulting on their loans — in his case, the money he borrowed to finance his degrees. But there are consequences. Using advances in cognitive science and chemical therapy, Ben’s debtors can reclaim their property — his education. The government calls the process “Repossession Therapy.” The data Ben’s repossession will yield is invaluable to those improving the “indexing” technology — a remarkable medical advance that has enabled the effective cure of all mental disorders. By disassembling his mind, doctors will gain the expertise to assist untold millions. But Ben has no intention of losing his mind without a fight, so he begins teaching in the park, distributing his knowledge before it’s gone in a race against ignorance. And somewhere in Ben’s confusing takedown, Chimpanzee arrives. Its iconography appears spray-painted around town. Young people in rubber chimpanzee masks start massive protests. As Ben slowly loses himself, the Chimpanzee movement seems to grow. And all fingers point to Ben.

Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopia, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

220 pages, Hardcover

First published August 9, 2014

About the author

Darin is the bestselling author of Noise, Chimpanzee, and Totem — and Light Both Foreign and Domestic, a collection of short fiction. He lives in Texas with his wife.

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a review of the hardcover, but I have to say I am really looking forward to listening to the radio play version that arrived in my mailbox on Saturday!

What I need in my dystopia is realism and possibility, that it could happen here, in my lifetime. That is the brilliance Darin Bradley brings to his novels, both in Noise and in Chimpanzee.

The premise of Chimpanzee may be even more chilling to those of us working in academia, who have seen the impact of the various economic downturns on expensive liberal arts educations. Now that there are no job guarantees, and no guarantee on the investment made (often by the students through hefty loans), people are starting to question the benefit of the system we have maintained for so long.

I hate this conversation, because I work at one of those schools, and depend on it for my livelihood. So did the author, for a while. And that's where reality and the terror of this possible future start to blur within the novel. Benjamin Cade, actually Dr. Benjamin Cade, can't find work teaching and can't pay back his student loans. He is in the middle of having his education repossessed, a treatment that deletes memories along with knowledge. In the meantime, he is required to pay back the cost of the treatments by working for Renewal, the government structure that reigns in some of the chaos during the New Depression.

Cade's memories are included every once in a while between the text of the present day, and the reader can see how the repossession has started to effect them. I don't want to say more about the story because I think the rest should be discovered by the reader.

Anyone else still paying off their student loans? Yeah....

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read 1/23/16 - 2/1/16
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended that you pay your friggen school loans off because holy shit the government is gonna get theirs...
Pages: 216
Publisher: Underland Press
Released: 2015





Holy fuck you guys, get those school loans paid off, pronto!

In a future dystopia, America enters The Second Great Depression and people are losing their jobs left and right. In an effort to maintain some form of control, as college grads begin to default on their school loans, the government starts forcefully removing their unpaid 'education', and the memories attached to that education, from their brains through a process called Repossession Therapy. A crazy underground movement emerges, one that Dr. Benjamin Cade finds himself pulled into, when he begins holding free classes in the middle of a local park, in a desperate attempt to pass on his knowledge before it's completely taken from him.

It's like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind only you don't get to choose what's taken from you. And what's taken from you can be stored, stolen, and sold on the black market. It's a fucking horror show. I don't know about you, but if my husband or I lost our job and could only afford to pay some of our bills, I'd make damn sure we'd throw all of our money at the ones that would cause someone to come knocking on my door, tie me to a couch, and suck memories out of my brain. Cell phone bill? Suddenly not important anymore. Sell the shittin' things on Ebay. Cable bill? Nu-uh. Screw that. No more Walking Dead and X-Files. It's a sacrifice I am willing to make. Car loans? Welp, one of us is out of work so we don't need to drive anywhere anymore. They can repo the car. Take it. Have fun with it. Credit cards? Ok, come on over and take back the couch, the TV (since we won't be watching anything on it, haha) and whatever else we've charged. But no fucking way are you putting that memory-sucking freak cap on my head and messing with my mind. Not having it!

This is science fiction grounded in reality. This is fright fiction because it's not-so-far-fetched. This is the kind of book we'll look back on in 20 years and say "how the hell did Darin predict this?". It's scary because it could happen. It's scary because Darin could be writing about himself. It's scary because it's something I could see our government doing when push comes to shove.

And how strangely timely, because have you seen the news? A man was just recently arrested for failure to appear in court for a school loan that went unpaid for nearly 30 years!

This future, it's coming. And it ain't looking too promising, ya'll.

[Yann Rousselot · Rating 4 out of 5]

So if you took Twelve Monkeys, add The Time Traveler's Wife but subtract the time-travel, multiply by 1984, factor in Strange Days and divide by Fight Club, you get Chimpanzee. (Wow, that required some intense concentration. Had I had a PhD it would have been easier - maybe I do, and it was repossessed.)

Honestly, I fell into this novel with gusto. The prose is tight, so tight sometimes you wish he's just let loose with some florid flourish, but Bradley's prose is straight-edge, sharp as a tack. The narrator has a PhD in cognitive science and philosophy (or something...) so a lot of the work is steeped in this first-person's clever-dick POV, but it's not showing off: it's central to the plot.

Well, sort of.

The world is crumbling, this sort of failed-capitalist leading to failed-socialist nightmare dystopia, errday errthang is falling to pieces, people are having their educations repossessed like some clockwork orange therapy, and anyone defaulting on their loans becomes a slave to the state. There is a revolution fomenting, a black market currency rising, censorship is the order of the day, everyone is afraid of taxes and government intervention and there is no spoon and the cake is a lie.

There is not much action either, but there is this love story. That's one of the things that kept me going, the love story is close to the bone, tempered by the greyness of time and hardship, a sort of realism, a sort of deromanticising which is romantic in itself. (The flashbacks grow gap-toothed, memories collapse, crumbling the foundations of a love story, à la Eternal Sunshine - truly poignant)

The plot is dense, moves along smoothly, the prose is so clever and yet nebulous (imagine a philosopher painting the world as his mind falls apart) I found myself getting into it just because I like the sound of the guy's voice.

The thing about The Time Traveler's Wife, Fight Club, Strange Days and 12 Monkeys, is that the ending was always so spectacular you were left kind of breathless, gasping like a fish out of water. The ending to Chimp is a little flat in comparison, specially given the scale of the conclusion, the actual events, all seem muted by the character's distant POV. That clinical distance is an interesting device, and creates this space for commentary, humour, and poignant moments, but also takes us away from the action a little.

I am a sucker for action, but it wasn't a deal-breaker, this is a strong novel with rich characters who I wanted to understand, wanted to see unfold. Highly recommend, I'll be keeping an eye out for Bradley's work in the future.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this book because frankly, I didn't understand it. I don't know what happened in it and I don't know what it was trying to say.

I was intrigued by the premise that if one defaults on his student loans, the government could repossess the knowledge you had gained during your education. That idea is tied up with what exactly constitutes the "self"--our memories, experiences, associations or something more concrete?

However, everything was far too vague to understand what the author was saying. Even the basic plot is unclear to me, as well as the mechanisms by which the repossession therapy and "chimping" are executed. There are things that just don't make sense. The main character has no idea what's going on and is constantly exhorted to "figure it out". It doesn't seem like he ever does, and I certainly didn't. Nothing was answered, nothing was explained. I don't know if the author really just didn't have any answers or thought that this style of obfuscating and implying was groundbreaking writing--given that he has a PhD in literary theory I'm guessing a little of column A and a little of column B--but whatever he was attempting was not successful.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure what I just read, but I think I loved it.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Noise, Bradley's first novel, groups of young people learned that in the static of now defunct analog television broadcasts, some person or group was laying down rules for how to survive an imminent breakdown of society. The rulebook lay out the necessary stockpiling of food and weaponry, but its most important lessons were in ruthlessness. When the collapse begins, we see how well the group Bradley created has absorbed these lessons.

Chimpanzee is a not a sequel to the first novel, but Bradley has stated it is part of a "thematic cluster." The collapse has not led to anarchy. The world has settled into what is called The Second Great Depression, and the government has taken the necessary measures to maintain a tenuous control. Many of the unemployed find a place in government-sponsored Renewel service. But this is no WPA. Renewel employees are working off debts by doing menial, manual labor that is in stark contrast to the professions they once held. They are also conscripted to become Monitors, spies expected to report insurgent or merely suspicious behavior.

Cade, the hero of the novel, has learned that his PhD in literary theory did not guarantee him a job in academia. He has been ordered to report to Renewal. But in what is both Bradley's funniest and creepiest invention, he must pay off his student loans by undergoing Repossession Therapy. Over a series of sessions, his therapist will use newly invented technology to remove everything that Cade learned at University, starting with the most advanced work he did for his PhD.

Life in the Depression goes on. Stores are seriously understocked, but Cade, his wife, and their friends still meet in pubs for beers, go to movies, got to clubs to hear new bands, and attend parties. There are hiking trips to state parks. And there is the new pastime called "chimping." Chimping incorporates goggles similar to what Cade wears in his therapy sessions. When you chimp, you put them on and choose from a menu of moods and experiences. His first time out, Cade learns that "paranoia" is not a good choice.

Meanwhile, Cade's wife still has her mathematics professorship at the local university. With her income they look to buy one of the many bargain-priced homes among the foreclosed properties on offer. They also plan to have a baby.

Cade is bored. He begins teaching impromptu classes in rhetoric and literary theory in a nearby park. Informal outdoor classes have become something of a fad, and he wants to make some use of his education before Repossession Therapy takes it away. He attracts a crowd of young people surprisingly eager to learn what he has to say about rhetoric and literary theory. Monitors observe but do not interfere--that is until they do. His young students introduce Cade to an underground society living in squats and developing their own monetary system. Cade thinks of himself as an outside observer with this crowd, but revolution is brewing. Cade is getting pulled into its vortex.

Bradley's has not titled his novel after the "chimping" technology that plays a larger and larger role in it. Rather chimping itself seems to reference the stickers and spray-painted stencils of a screaming chimpanzee head that have become a prevalent form of graffiti. It's meaning remains elusive, but it follows the first dictate of Cade's instruction to his students. You begin by getting your audience's attention.

[Mackenzie Lykins · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great idea for a book with a bad execution :/ I feel like it ended before the story was even fully formed and I really didn’t like the way he described any women in the story.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, the book has a clever concept. Take the current topic of student loan debt, then incorporate what lenders do when a borrower defaults on payments on a mortgage or car loan - repossession. The book doesn't assume this can be done the same way as a car repossession (taking the car to a sales lot and selling the same car to another buyer.) Rather, what is done is make the person who can't pay his student loan effectively unable to access (and therefore unable to use) the education related to the unpaid debt. They impose unpleasant associations which cause the mind to suppress the learning experience. Let's hope the book doesn't give lenders any ideas.

The author is able to use words in an artful way. (This is not my top priorities, but it's good if you can get that as well as the other things.) However, I found one aspect of the text bothersome. The book is a first-person account by Ben, who defaulted on his loans and is going through "repossession therapy." As he presents the story, we often get a flashback in the middle of the current scene. These don't always seem truly relevant or informative to the scene being interrupted. And, at least in the audiobook, it's not always clear at first a flashback is being inserted rather than simply an abrupt change of scene. The author may intend this to reflect Ben's mental state as a result of repossession therapy, I'm not sure. I think there are other less confusing ways the impact of the repossession therapy could be shown, including some which the author used. For instance, having Ben telling us something, but leaving blanks in the text for things he was no longer able to access.

Ben seems to be accepting of the repossession therapy to which he is required to submit. Considering the facts that his background has given him much knowledge of cognition, and therefore perhaps better understanding of the intended and unintended consequences of the therapy, that can made readers think about this more. The book conveys that the perspective on life, understanding, social interactions, etc. which Ben gained through his education is an important part of who he is (was before therapy.) So, one can imagine how much it will change Ben.

As the book progresses, we see more of a counter-culture trying to provide some of what the mainstream culture is failing to do. The significance of this grows, perhaps more than one would think.

At the end of the book, Ben appears to have discovered the answer to something which had previously eluded him. Ben's answer is never explicitly stated. I could suggest a few possible answers, and I could suggest objections to each of them. In that sense, the ending was not satisfying. On a larger scale, the book suggests coming events which the reader does not actually get to see.

The book does give readers things to think about, and a unique vision of a possible future.

[AudioBookReviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

My original Chimpanzee audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

The economy has collapsed. The government is overwhelmed, crushed by national and personal debt and the corresponding lack of revenue. Benjamin Cade has lost his teaching job, and like so many others, has defaulted on his student loans. Technology and economics have come up with a solution. If you don’t pay for your education you lose it. Cade must now go through the grueling brain therapy that repossesses his PhD while simultaneously working in a government work detail – translation: chain gang. When they’re done, he won’t be able to remember the things he learned or discovered during his doctoral program.

This innovative novel is not for everyone, but for the right audience is an exceptional work of fiction and performance. Part pedagogy and part Sci-Fi dystopia, the listener is constantly challenged both intellectually and philosophically. Is the American Dream really this banal?

This is not simply a narrated novel; it is a performance piece with multiple voices, music and sound effects. It is generally well done and effective, giving us ambiance when Cade goes to a party, or static when Cade’s education is being blocked. The production is odd at times however, giving unnecessarily long pauses between character dialogue or scene changes. This is sometimes confusing (intentionally?), but not enough to detract from an otherwise excellent and unique performance audio-book. The author is the main narrator and does an excellent job reading his own novel. No one knows the story better than its author. The music is great and you will want to find out who the bands are (listed at the end of the novel).

Pick up Chimpanzee because you want to be challenged, want to think about the future, about real possibilities and important ideas. If you are a lover of Philip K. Dick’s last novels, paranoid and identity confusing, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or Cory Doctorow’s many near-future dystopian novels, you will likely enjoy this book. At six hours, it is a relatively short listen, but packed with a lot of information. Yes, it is good enough to listen to several times, and you will want to, to catch the nuance and philosophical density. It is not a light listen, you have to pay attention, stop what you are doing, really listen and think about the author’s ideas. You may not agree, but you will appreciate the chance to use your mind for a change.

Audiobook purchased for review by ABR.

[Daniel Amaral · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was just ok for my taste. I initially got it because I heard it was an interesting modern dystopic novel, and I wanted to see what the modern dystopia genre was all about. I don't feel I got a very good introduction out of this one, however. It's got a lot of interesting ideas with vr drugs "chimp goggles", the repossession therapy where basically you repay your debt to the government with your memories, and I did like how they showed Ben's memories disappearing over the course of the book. And the Renewal program was an interesting concept too, tho by the end of it, it didn't understand what its purpose was.

I think that's the most glaring flaw of the book as I feel what it is all revealed by the end doesn't make much sense, and kind of undid all the interesting ideas it was going for. This would ok if the plot up to the point where shit was going down was interesting, but it felt like there wasn't much to chew on by the end of the book.

The character's too were not very interesting. Seeing the book through the eyes of an unemployed English professor who seems to be uninterested by everything and has contempt for everyone he meets is hard to read. Admittedly he is well crafted that you know about his memories before he loses them as well as the relationships he has with all the other characters, but he just was not someone I want to read about. He's almost like a stereotypical boring college professor.

And the writing feels uneven too. I do understand the intention of it being choppy considering what happens throughout the story, but you only get to some really good descriptions and gripping situations about 3/4 of the way in. The rest of it is just him moping around and very SLOWLY building up to what this book is all about.

Now, as with all dystopic novels, the novel wants to give a message we can all take away and look our societies in a different way. So what is it I can take away from this novel? I suppose that we lose our sense of humanity when we let forces, like government and economics, out of our control, and we lose our ability to speak and express ourselves. Ben throughout the book is teaching people how a message is conveyed and culminates into something out Ben's control. Whether this is a caution against what we say or a call to action to be more expressive is up to the reader, but that ending really makes me question if everything the novel was building up to was pointless. Which doesn't really encourage me to go back and try to piece it together.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chimpanzee is an intelligent dystopian novel. Bradley introduces a future where America is deep into a New Depression. People are losing their jobs, and struggling to survive. Benjamin Cade, a PhD in literature, finds himself as one of the strugglers and can no longer pay on his student loans. No problem, his loan holders can now take back what he gained with their money, in Benjamin’s case they are repossessing his education. Through advances in cognitive science and chemical therapy, Ben must undergo Repossession Therapy and “give back” his advanced degrees by surrendering his memory of graduate and doctorate school. Not wanting to lose himself in this process, Ben starts teaching in a public park free for everyone. As his following grows, he finds himself swept up in an underground counterculture that he was only dimly aware existed.
Bradley’s writing is reminiscent of Orwell. It is a commentary on current trends of society taken to an extreme. If you are looking for a novel that will make you stop and think, but yet still be entertained, then read Chimpanzee.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chimpanzee, by Darin Bradley
4.5 stars. This first rate sci-fi is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's " Farenheit 451. Benjamin Cade, PhD. is a former university professor whose position has been eliminated. The U.S. Economy is devastated and half the homes in the country have been foreclosed on. Ben joins the millions of unemployed and is unable to pay back his student loans. The Federal Govt. is determined to reclaim their property...Ben's education. Ben is forced to under go "Repossesion Therapy", a combination of advanced cognitive science and chemical injections which will strip him of not only his degrees, but of his memories as well. Determined to give his knowledge away before it completely disappears, Ben begins teaching in the park and unwittingly becomes tied to a massive protest movement, Chimpanzee.
Fascinating look into the future. Highly recommended.

[Catherine Curley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool idea. Maybe its just been a really long time since I’ve read a fiction novel. The author just seemed kind of horny and full of himself.

[Sara DeSantis (Hot Reads Librarian]

A book we mentioned in class

[Sandra Frey · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a great sci-fi dystopian idea in this book, and the mention of it on the cover flap was what made me excited to read it--the idea that if people default on their student loans, the government can repossess their education. There are great peripheral questions that accompany this idea, questions that the author does touch on, but doesn't really explore--such as what happens to the parts of you that the government redacts (and stores), what this does to your memories and relationships from a particular chunk of your life, and what ripple effects it ends up having on your entire personality and purpose. I am still excited by the idea of reading THAT book, the one that goes in deep to explain the process and the unintended effects.

This book couches the whole idea in a sort of mishmash of more generic dystopian conditions (poverty, oppression, unrest), which are never holistically explained, and so reveal themselves at an odd pace. (E.g., you're pretty far into the story before the author casually mentions that the government sends monitors out to spy on people for signs of inefficiency.) The book also couches the entire plot in somewhat dense explanations of academic theory--cognitive, psychological, behavioral, philosophical. These do remind you of how critical academics are to this character who is scheduled to lose them, but they also read substantially like the author analyzing his own work in order to show you the thought he put into building his world. This is to say, the tail starts to wag the dog: it feels as though the plot starts to revolve around highlighting particular theoretical principles the author wants to address.

The ultimate effect is a loss of immediacy. Things of great consequence seem to be happening, but they are discussed in a style that places analysis over narration. The consequences become minimally consequential. Given that this is not the first story to use primates as a revolutionary symbol, I found myself missing the oomph of the others.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seemed to me like it was trying to blend philosophy with too many subjects for a 200 page book. I would have liked it better if it were longer and just focused on the chimping and repossession; Instead, it tried to weave in social unrest, house hunting, unemployment, and a form of debtor’s prison as well. The story was spread too thin, and the lackadaisical attitude of the protagonist leaves the confusing revelation simply frustrating. Ben doesn’t have the answers to make the grand scope of the book interesting. To have all these elements in play it would have been much more interesting if the book was written from Dmitri or Sireen’s point of view, or possibly not have a centralized protagonist.

[Padders]

So through my all my years of reading today was a first. I started the book and had a sudden case of deja Vu... Nonetheless I went on and then just straight out could remember how the book would end. Curious... I went to the last 30/50 pages and it was exactly the ending I remembered!!!

I won't rate this one as it was obviously a while ago when I read it so don't feel like I can give a true rating until I decide to re-read!

[Sue Chant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't get on too well with this to start with - I found the protagonist to be whiny and self-obsessed - but the subtle dystopia gradually grew on me. The slow unravelling of comfortable middle-class expectations as economic depression hits, and the small acts of rebellion that slowly accrete into a larger revolt all rang true and the story held my interest even when the protagonist's philosophical ramblings didn't.

[Wegmarken2006 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Commoditization of enlightenment

[Rick Hunter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this book through Goodreads Firstreads giveaway.

I really, really wanted to like this book. Of the 500 or so books that I've entered to win here on Goodreads, this would be in the top 10 of the ones that I wanted the most. The concept of this book is one of the most original ideas that I've ever heard of. In the book, the government repossesses people's educations by hooking them up to these machines if that individual has defaulted on their student loan. That sounds super interesting to me. Unfortunately, the execution of putting that idea onto paper is where the author fell short. I have an English degree, but my knowledge of English Theory is nowhere on the level of Darin Bradley's. My vocabulary isn't even on par with his. He uses the word scalar several times. I looked the word up and still don't really understand what it means. It has something to do with math and physics, but that's about all I could tell you about it. As to the context that scalar was used by Bradley in the book, I have absolutely no idea of what he was trying to say.

There are other instances in the book where Bradley tries to get too philosophical talking about the meaning of self, or space, or something else that just slows down the pace of the story. The next thing thing you know there might be a page or two that go go by and you'll start thinking that the story might be about to pick up pace and become interesting, but he'll jump to another time, go to describing what syntax or rhetoric mean, jump back to the present for a sentence or two, go back to the past for a few lines, or anything else that mires the story down to keep the story from moving along. The fact that the story jumps around so often really irritated me. I don't have ADHD. I can focus on one thing for a while. Mr Bradley doesn't seem to be able to do that. I found the title of the book to be very suitable since the story jumped about about as much as a monkey in a cage at a zoo flinging feces everywhere. The author of the book was also a figurative monkey flinging some feces onto a page.

I honestly don't know of a single person that I could recommend this book to. I know people that are in the field of academics. Those people range from teachers to pricipals. I don't believe that a single one of them would get what the author was trying to say and/or enjoy the journey that the author takes them down. Since I don't personally know anyone that would like this book out of all the readers I know, I can't in good conscience recommend it to the public at large.

[McKenzie Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book from Booklikes in exchange for an honest review. Like many of the other reviewers for this book, I liked it but have no idea what to make of it.At first, I just wasn't into it. Ben's ideas were too vaguely philosophical to interest me and I thought he was kind of a pretentious jerk. As the novel went on, both of those things still rang true, but I was so caught up in the events surrounding Ben that I didn't really even pay much attention to him anymore. The idea of Repossession Therapy was fascinating and I was really interested in finding out what Chimpanzee was. I couldn't stop reading. And then the end came and there were more questions left unanswered than there were answered, which was horribly frustrating.Throughout the novel, Ben emphasizes the importance of getting your audience's attention. And that's what the novel felt like: it got your attention. But it didn't go any further than that. There was something missing. There was no message driving the book. It just kind of went along. For most of the book, Ben doesn't even really do anything. He just goes along with what people tell him. There's a whole system of people working to help him and he just can't put the pieces together. Most of the time he seems too caught up in his own thinking to realize things are going on around him. It was also difficult since Ben didn't know what was going on so, as Ben was the narrator, the reader also was left in the dark. I'm sure I glossed over and minimized the importance of some scenes, but I feel like the whole thing went over my head. By the end there was so much chaos and emotion without any real logic behind it. I felt so much passion while reading it, but once I stopped I couldn't verbalize what it all meant. I went along with the mob mentality of the book, but it didn't feel like it went anywhere.Having said all that, I still think it was an interesting read even though I really cannot tell you what the book was about

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I disliked philosophy in college. I provide that preface to this review so you understand the significance of my five star rating. The protagonist thinks/journals and teaches his subject matter (writing and rhetoric) with large amounts of philosophical meandering. But the plot and the dance along it were well worth my time. In fact, I don't think a character with any other traits would not have pulled this off.

Darin Bradley took economic policy and banking greed to the extreme and yet I didn't feel like the scenarios presented here were far from the possibilities for our silly little nation. I LOVE "repossession counseling" and the question - "who owns your education if you can't pay off your loans?"

While my head wobbled through the depth of that and other questions about relationship, connection, self ... The characters and situations he placed us in tugged my elbow toward the dance floor. Before I knew it I was walking peacefully until page 195 where the story reached a crescendo and we started with head-banging tension until the resolution. Hugo would have been proud of this revolution. Austin would have giggled at the end and shook her head knowingly.

I write reviews for everything I read but as per the rules, I did receive this via a Goodreads Giveaway.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here we have a piece of decently written science fiction about the collapse of American society and the loss and reconstruction of the self through technology. The novel's central conceit is that, in a collapsing job market, people who can't pay back student loans are forced to give back their education through emotional repression that also represses some of the subjects other memories as a collateral loss. In the background, people have been playing games in which they "sim" various mental states, and the market for sims is growing and becoming seedier as time goes on. Then the things intersect.
The part about the crippling debt of college and the collapse of American job markets is pretty spot-on. There's a strong sense of paranoia about being watched by the authorities that seems a little too much, though it's also such a common trope in these sorts of books that I won't fault it too much. The simulated "chimping" is an interesting, though I'm not really sure how strictly original, concept that seems like something out of a Philip K. Dick story.
Overall, though, a solid, fast-moving novel.

[Fritze Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's so perfect for *today* in it's depiction of people finding, or making, ways to survive in an ever declining economy.

Whereas books like 1984 and The Hunger Games are set in extreme distopias, this one is relatively minor. Loan forfeiture leading to foreclosure, freedom of expression vs. the police state, struggling against poverty - it's all there and it's all bad. And yet Bradley also gives us some faith that humanity will keep trucking and our innate creativity will find ways to go beyond surviving. We may lose some battles, but we'll win some too. We'll take back what should be ours, what should belong to the every-man.

I have a lot more to say about this story, but I need to read it again to fully appreciate everything Bradley accomplishes in this slim volume. And while this book is short, it is surprisingly dense with both story and meaning. It makes me think about my own writing and how I can be more economical with words.

[Fantasy Literature · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the midst of a severe depression, where government officials are obsessed with micromanaging everything they can lay their hands on in the name of efficiency and the public good, Benjamin Cade loses his teaching job and finds himself, along with the majority of the population, unemployed. Unable to pay back his student loans, Ben must face the logical conclusion, and Darin Bradley's haunting extrapolation, of viewing education as a product to be bundled and sold: His degrees in literature and literary theory will have to be repossessed.

In Darin Bradley’s debut Noise, which I reviewed previously, the US has fully collapsed in on itself. In Chimpanzee, the country stands at the edge of a very sharp knife, with chronic unemployment a reality and people having to depend on government hando... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, the premise of deleting state taught memories (as repayment for debt) kinda intrigued me, but I found it to be too typical of most of the writing these days....writers who are intelligent (or think they are...lol) lording over how smart they are, using arcane language (big words to us not so smart people) that serves no purpose other than to prove their worth. I'm sorry, I read to escape, not to try to decipher graduate school language! The beginning of the book was especially difficult to get past the language, but towards the middle I was starting to actually like it, then the style came back somewhat towards the end. An ok read, but far from my favorite!

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the concept of this book, and I really wanted to enjoy it. Unfortunately, for me the writing didn't hold up to the excellent premise. To me it read as rather self-indulgent and overly concerned with its own brilliance, to the great detriment of the actual storytelling. You could maybe sell this as a sort of performance art, but as an enjoyable narrative it falls flat. It is a novel that feels created for the sole purpose of dissecting it in a college classroom, and in that way it misses the basic point of a novel that I want to read: something coherent and enjoyable!

[Jen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Collapsed economy, government recovering defaulted student loans by "repossessing" the knowledge the loans paid for, protests by masked youth? This book should have been right up my alley.

It felt disjointed, self-absorbed, pretentious; a masturbatory navel gazing story that goes nowhere, and goes there slowly.

I was going to give 2 stars, but the more I think about this novel, the less I like it.

[Turok Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow going. Moments that peak interest, then move towards abstraction. A few unfinished subplots: Why the violence? What was the affair? what happened and why to Cynthia? etc,. CHIMPANZEE never seems to figure what it wants to be. Chimping goggles don't appear until later in the book, then become a universal allegory that gets a mandatory nod at the end of each section. I respect the novel. I believe the writer has a huge intellect. However, it tended to bore....

[Joetta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It wasn't perfect, and sometimes it felt unclear in a way that didn't seem helpful to the story, but overall super intriguing and engaging. One thing, though, that really drove me bonkers is how he talked about wearing the rose-colored glasses and how for days everything looked different. That is just not how the visual system works---most adjustment happens within a minute if I'm remembering correctly, but definitely on that time scale.