Looking For A Great Summer Read?

Then I have good news... One of my favorite books just came out in paperback! What follows is taken from a longer review I composed for Duke Magazine:

______Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo
__By Vanessa Woods

________When we meet Vanessa Woods, she is a naïve, love-struck twenty-something preparing to follow her fiancé, Brian Hare(now her husband and an assistant professor of anthropology at Duke), to Africa, where they will research primate behavior. Caught up in the romance of a budding relationship, she writes: “I pictured us in matching safari outfits, striding through the Ngamba forest, baby chimpanzees dangling from our arms. I would make insightful and intelligent comments that would revolutionize his research. He would introduce me as the inspiration behind his ideas.”

But there has been a change of plans. Brian has suddenly become fascinated with our other close primate relatives, the bonobos. Instead of Ngamba, they fly to Kinshasa in Congo, a country ravaged by war, famine, political instability, and genocide. Woods describes staring at Hare as he snores peacefully next to her on the evening before their departure, wondering whether she is about to make the biggest mistake of her life. So begins Bonobo Handshake, a memoir that is alternately hopeful and heartbreaking.

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Yet there is a lot more to this memoir than conservation and science. Woods gradually exposes an unsettling and, at times, devastating side of Congo. Logging and the hunt for limited resources such as diamonds, tin, and cobalt by outsiders have led to the destruction of the Congolese rainforest where bonobos live. More recently, an international rush to the region in pursuit of the mineral coltan—required to power our laptops and cell phones—has placed ever more pressure on this vulnerable population.

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My favorite aspect of Bonobo Handshake is how intimately it is written; Woods is not afraid to reveal sides of herself that most authors avoid. While it is easy to admire her courage and wit, she also shares her personal flaws, candidly describing difficulties in her marriage. For instance, after a whirlwind romantic courtship, challenges arise when she suddenly finds herself working for her spouse. The result is a fully realized and trustworthy narrator with many dimensions.

This elegantly written, true story about love, loss, and hope is delightful to read and impossible to forget. My full review is here.