Beep: A Novel

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.