Baltimore Sun
A remarkable book that deserves to be read by a large audience...The themes in Mr. Boyd's novel are universal. The story is compelling. The setting is exotic. In virtually every respect I am enthusiastic about Brazzabille Beach.
Boston Globe
An engrossing novel aobut hte nature of man and apes...a bold, seamless blend of philosophy and suspense...rich and intricate, it neverhteless remains accessible to general readers on a level of pure entertainment.
Houston Chronicle
Masterful...a marvelous book...an odyssey through that darkest of all continents -- the human heart.
Publishers Weekly
- Publisher's Weekly
Though Boyd made his reputation with novels of larky humor, his new work is a literate tale of romantic suspense that eschews comic relief and holds the reader's attention with effective foreshadowing. Like his last novel, The New Confessions , this highly readable tale is primarily a first-person narrative. Here Boyd's storyteller is Hope Clearwater, who has fled marital difficulties back in England to study chimpanzees in Africa. Through her eyes the reader is introduced to a bevy of English and American eccentrics, some benign, others malevolent in their effects on one another and on the chimpanzees. As a nonexpert, Hope observes the chimpanzees from an unusual perspective (which mirrors her refreshing and deeply felt attempts to understand her idiosyncratic estranged husband, a mathematician), and her discovery of warring factions among the supposedly peace-loving chimps roils academic and emotional waters for everyone. The novel, contradictorily, is both rambling and tightly woven, with Boyd inserting insightful, third-person commentary on the characters' inner lives. As befits a protagonist telling her own story, Hope often doesn't know where she's going until she gets there, but Boyd's skill in developing her character overrides some slight confusion about the more picaresque aspects of her adventure. Boyd should widen his audience with this adroitly written, accessible tale. (June)
Library Journal
Hope Clearwater lives alone in a beach house in an unnamed African country, trying to patch together her shattered life. An ecologist, she had come to Africa to participate in primate research and to heal the deep wounds of her marriage to a brilliant English mathematician; but she soon found herself plunged into another crisis, one that threatened not only her career but also her life. In a book packed with scientific and mathematical metaphors, Boyd explores how people create, defend, ignore, or subvert the belief systems that govern their lives. If on one level this is an intellectual thriller, on another it is very much an exciting and riveting adventure story, and on yet another a subtle examination of the power grid of personal relationships. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/91.-- Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
