His Monkey Wife

It was the mid-1970s.

Sorry, I can't narrow it down any more than that. It was, after all, nearly fifty years ago and my memory isn't what it once was.

My friend Dave and I would frequently be found at a book store located in a shopping center in our small north Georgia town. This store is where I bought such classics as Camus' The Stranger , Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Hermann Hesse' Siddhartha and Steppenwolf . They weren't all high-brow novels; I may have bought a few Conan the Barbarian paperbacks there as well.

It was during one of those many visits that I came upon a very unusual book. It was a short story collection by an author whose name would escape me for a good many years. I now know the name - John Collier. On the cover, Collier was named as the author of His Monkey Wife . Although I was completely unfamiliar with His Monkey Wife , there was something about the title that intrigued me. I purchased the book of short stories. The stories were bizarre and unusual and I enjoyed every one.

Unfortunately, I was never able to locate a copy of His Monkey Wife until recently when I came upon a few of Collier's books online.

To say His Monkey Wife is a strange book would be an under statement. Quite a number of reviewers at goodreads.com gave this book a thumbs down, perhaps having expected this book to be another Bedtime for Bonzo. It is certainly not that.

My best bet is that Collier intended this book to be a satire on literature of the Victorian era. Picture one of the Brontë sisters (or Dickens) writing a serious novel of a young girl who is scorned by polite society, either because of race, class, or perhaps even a physical impairment, trying to marry a man of upper middle class England. Then, turn the story on it's head by making the poor young girl a chimpanzee and write it in all seriousness.

There is tragedy and there is humor in the novel, although I would not call the comedy "knee slapping". Google Books describes the novel as "A comic masterpiece about a classic love triangle: a man, a woman, and a chimpanzee." I wouldn't go as far as to call this book a "comic masterpiece"; that would be going a bit too far, but I'm happy to have finally read this book after so many years.