Welcome to Litsy!

Professor Dallerhyde spends his afternoons outside the London Zoo cage of a pair of Hackenfeller's Apes, Percy and Edwina, frustrated in his attempts to study their mating habits by Percy's dolorous indifference to his companion. Then Kendrick arrives, informing Dallerhyde that Percy has been requisitioned for a one-way experimental trip on a space rocket, and the Professor's morals and sentimentality mix to formulate an escape plan... 4🐒
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"Radiant and full-leafed, the Park was alive with the murmuring vibration of the species which made it its preserve."

#FirstLineFridays @shybookowl

I like the way the novel starts with a zoologist's-eye-view of creatures cavorting and disporting themselves in their natural environment, the identity of the animals shortly disclosed when it is revealed that some of them are playing cricket ?

"He enjoyed the sunshine on his face and the patterns of the white dust at his feet. The persistence of the aeroplane's noise, however, reminded him of an uneasiness in himself. Uneasiness seemed to be the background of all ruminations belonging to the twentieth century, just as all its landscapes were presided over, somewhere in the distance, by an aeroplane." ☀️✈️?️

"Once we acknowledge sentiment in other animals, we are bound to acknowledge what follows: their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
- Brigid Brophy

[Quotation not necessarily from the tagged book ?]

A 1953 satire about animal rights. The blurb says that Brophy's 1965 manifesto, "The Rights of Animals," kick-started the modern animal rights movement, so she has good credentials. Her other biographical details say she also campaigned for prison reform, gay rights, pacifism, humanism and vegetarianism, so I'm expecting to find "Hackenfeller's Ape" hitting my marks ??

#booksandvinyl for the song monkey gone to heaven. I'm trying to read at least one of my #vmc a month from now on and this one is a weird but kinda charming little book. A professor is studying Percy in the zoo when he finds out he's going to be sent up in a rocket so decides to try to monkeynap him instead. It's wryly funny and I don't know what else to say about it other than I thoroughly enjoyed it. #virago