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Content snapshot
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Violence
Some
Animal experimentation referenced; some campus violence in the backstory
Language
Some
Adult language in the literary fiction register
Sexual Content
Barely any
Minimal sexual content
Substance Use
Barely any
Some college-era drinking
Emotional Intensity
A lot
The psychological trauma of losing a sibling — and of understanding retroactively what that sibling was — and the family silence that grew around the absence — is the novel's sustained and powerful subject
What this book is about
Karen Joy Fowler's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel follows Rosemary Cooke, who reveals midway through — in one of American fiction's great structural gambits — that her childhood sister Fern was a chimpanzee raised alongside her as part of her psychologist father's experiment. The consequences of Fern's removal ripple through the family for decades. Fowler writes about family, memory, animal cognition, and the ethics of scientific experimentation with wit and genuine moral weight. The novel contains references to animal experimentation and its human costs.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
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