Lucy
Laurence Gonzales
Knopf, Jul 13 2020, $24.95
ISBN: 9780307272607
With the death of her associate in the Congo, primate anthropologist Jenny Lowe rescues her crony’s daughter Lucy as the civil war continues to go unabated and ugly. Jenny and Lucy go to the anthropologist’s home in Chicago where the girl acts weird, but not shocking as she lived in the jungle.
Jenny begins to reconsider the child’s skills displaying abnormal strength and superhuman agility. However, it is Lucy’s seemingly instinctive preference to stay in trees rather than the ground that leads Jenny to realize that her tweener is a hybrid mix of half human and half pygmy chimpanzee. DNA testing confirms what the two females sort of knew. The kid insists she is a humanzee who reads the classics and can speak in several tongues, but has incredible senses well beyond the human range. Scientists make a bid to study her and HSD declares she doesn’t have any rights because she is not human and could be a terrorist
This deep look at what is human will have readers pondering the definition while wondering with a nod to Frankenstein although Lucy is charming how far science should go. The story line is fast-paced while introducing readers to a myriad of complex social, scientific and religious problematic convergences. Although the ending feels overly neat after how complicated the questions of Lucy’s human rights as a hybrid, fans will relish this thought provoking powerhouse.
Harriet Klausner
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