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An ebullient, funny, and hugely original novel told from the perspective of Beep, a squirrel monkey who—with the help of a brilliant young girl— forges the way forward for a planet in crisis.

In this immensely enjoyable and wise novel, it takes a sweet and personable squirrel monkey, Beep, to help us see the world we live in more clearly. While intending only to go deeper and higher into the Costa Rican rain forest to find a mate, he instead meets Inga, a kindly American tween on vacation with her family. Inadvertently, Beep travels to Manhattan with Inga. With her devoted help—and a bit of inspiration from a visiting Greta Thunberg, along with a dramatic zoo liberation—Beep manages to change the destiny of the world. He even finds his monkey love. Along the way, a vast cast of engaging and perceptive animals have a great deal to say about humanity and the divisions among us, our alien cities, our strange practices, our folly, as well as our beauty, and our promise, unfulfilled.

For fans of Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures and Dave Eggers’s The Eyes and the Impossible, Beep is full of humor, inspiration, and remarkable new ways of understanding how we live. Urgent but never earnest in the face of the increasing threats to our planet, Beep the monkey inspires us all to stop being the problem and start being the solution, loving and laughing all the way.

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"Reading this picaresque adventure story is a nearly psychedelic experience, made for those who like to read outside the box."
Washington Post
"With a lexicon worthy of Anthony Burgess, our small but mighty hero is quick to recognize the perils facing our fragile world. But Beep is a love story most of all, told with the poetry of a pure heart."
Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Dog of the North
"BEEP is a wonder, both monkey and novel, our hero's curious, questing soul, the ebullient brilliance of Roorbach’s prose. Wildly beautiful, funny, moving, entrancing, and hopeful, this is a story for our times, a ray of warm and generous light, a stern warning, a triumph of storytelling."
Kate Christensen, author of Welcome Home, Stranger
"BEEP is a work of glorious strangeness, invention, and hope. In this, Bill Roorbach's most original book yet, his simian hero makes monkeys of us all."
Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She’s Not There and co-author of Mad Honey
"Hilarious and heartfelt in equal parts, and Beep’s slow uptake of human ways is a revelation. Both the finely tuned rhythm of the humor and the crackpot vocabulary put me in mind of George Saunders—I love the kind of tweaked language that reminds me continuously as I read of the blind trust we put in words to reflect the world as it is, rather than creating it as we would like it to be.”
Kate Colby, author of Reverse Engineer and I Mean
“How do I love Beep? Let me count the ways. A novel for a new era, with a monkey serving as transmitter of the knowledge our species desperately needs. Full of heart, brilliantly written, with the wild Roorbachian humor and grace we've come to expect. Delight in Beep, Monkey. Hold tight.”

Sarah Braunstein, author of Bad Animals
“Roorbach masterfully imbues his simian narrator with a voice full of innocence and trepidation… [He] expertly balances the whimsical with the philosophical as Beep describes the world with a sense of wonder… An inspiring quest tale and imaginative bildungsroman that celebrates the natural world.”
Booklist
"The Weekly Reader has been raving about Bill Roorbach for years. Beep is a picaresque adventure about climate change, as told by a traveling squirrel monkey. The experience of reading it, which entails inhabiting monkey consciousness to see the world through monkey eyes, described in monkey language, is just about psychedelic... In my opinion, Beep is destined to be a cult classic... Check it out if you dare."
WYPR
“In the face of environmental calamity, Bill Roorbach's Beep melds hope, humor, a zoo-break and an outsider's perspective on humankind… Propulsive… with such winsome verve and exuberance… Roorbach fans will find much to love in this big-hearted, simian-centered highwire act… It’s [Beep’s] world now, we’re just living in it.”
Portland Press Herald
“In Roorbach’s capable hands, Beep’s speech becomes an intelligible and pleasingly simple amalgam of human words… Beep brims with hilarity, kindness, and humor and is a great choice for lovers of tall tales, animals, or both.”
Washington Independent Review of Books
"The event is a celebration of Bill’s most creative novel yet, Beep, which features the wisdom and insight of Beep, a squirrel monkey who saves the world. In Beep, Roorbach’s signature lyricism and sweeping lighthearted prose shines."
Left Bank Books
“In this good-natured fantasy… well paced and exciting… Roorbach’s vision of a world despoiled by human waste and carelessness is grimly plausible, and his hope for a better future is no doubt shared by all.”
Kirkus Reviews

On Sale: Jul 16, 2024
Page Count: 240 pages
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN-13: 9781643755649

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Bill Roorbach

About the Author

Bill Roorbach is the author of ten books, including the Montana Award-winning Lucky Turtle, The Girl of the Lake, the Kirkus Prize finalist The Remedy for Love, the bestselling Life Among Giants, and the Flannery O’Connor Award–winning collection Big Bend. Roorbach has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His craft book, Writing Life Stories, has been in print for over twenty-five years. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic,The New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, Granta, Ecotone, New York magazine, The American Scholar, and other publications. He lives in Maine with his family.

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Bill Roorbach

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