This honestly is one of the best books I've ever read. Mr. Thundermug tells the tale of a baboon and his family. However, Mr. Thundermug is no ordinary baboon--he thinks like a human and can put his thoughts into words. Although he can't read (at first), Mr. Thundermug has a good grasp of the English language. He and his wife and two children--all three of whom are ordinary baboons--arrive in an unnamed city and take up residence in a vacant building. No one knows where the baboon family came from, though there is an allusion to a zoologist who studied a baboon colony before his disappearance and indicates the possibility that humans and baboons were cross-bred. Just as Mr. Thundermug forges a close relationship with a local teacher, Angela Young, who teaches him to read and write, city officials begin to take notice of the Thundermugs. They take steps to evict them and ultimately send Mr. Thundermug to prison for animal cruelty, given that his children sleep in the tub. He eventually is forced to visit his family in the zoo. Mr. Thundermug is a very short novel, and it's amazing that Medvei packed a critique of modern society into just a few pages. By the end of the book, I was outraged at the treatment of Mr. Thundermug, then realized he symbolizes anyone who has been discriminated against because of race, sex, gender, income, language, weight, disability, religion, etc. I think Medvei chose to write about baboons because most people have a soft spot for animals, and it's obvious to the reader that Mr. Thundermug could easily contribute to society if people would stop seeing him only as a baboon. It makes you think about how various groups of people are mistreated in today's society and how not enough is being done to ensure equality. ( )

Continuing this weekend's streak of debut books dealing with "outsiders," I read Cornelius Medvei's novella Mr. Thundermug (HarperCollins) today. The jacket text just about says it all: "Mr Thundermug has a luxuriant mane of silvery hair. Mr Thundermug has an unsettling mastery of speech. Mr Thundermug is a baboon." Presented as a 'case study' written by an unnamed newspaper reporter, this short book treats the life and trials of one Mr. Thundermug, a baboon who has - entirely inexplicably - acquired the ability to speak perfect English and taken up residence with his family in an empty house.

Through his journalistic interlocutor, Medvei allegorically slices and dices the shortsightedness of human society, compiling a bizarre litany of bizarre, absurd, but somehow entirely believable baboon-human interactions: visits from Mr Forrest of the Housing Office, a requirement that Mr Thundermug's appropriately inarticulate children attend primary school (that does not turn out well), and finally the arrest and trial of Mr Thundermug for indecent exposure and cruelty to animals (i.e. his family, who, by choice, sleep in the bath).

Accompanied by odd, exquisite lithographs credited to Medvei himself, this short little book is intriguing and provocative. It is also quite funny, in that wry English sort of way. I'll certainly be on the lookout for the author's next creation.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2007/... ( )