BOOK REVIEW: SMITHY BY AMANDA DESIREE

9/4/2021

A 1970s experiment to teach a chimpanzee sign language,
heads into unchartered and terrifying territories

Amanda Desiree’s fascinating debut Smithy which treads a fine line between psychological study and horror/thriller will undoubtedly be one of 2021’s most ambitious novels. For the majority of the plot, too much for my taste, events were deeply entrenched around the activities of a group of seven collegiate researchers attempting to teach a chimpanzee American Sign Language. Coming it at a hefty 500 pages, it might be too long for some readers, as 250 pages were gone before we begin to get a serious inkling that something spectral might be afoot. Much of your enjoyment of Smithy will depend on how you take to the very detailed psychological study. However, the sheer level of thoroughness Desiree puts into this study was truly commendable and incredibly believable. Hell, you could be mistaken for thinking you were reading the account of a genuine experiment.

Why might you be mistaken for believing you were reading an authentic study? The experiment took place between 1974-5 and the entire book is made up of excerpts gathered from the period, embracing the epistolary format by the throat. This style can often be a tension killer, but the sheer range of sources Desiree presents the reader with keeps the story flowing, albeit slowly. At least twenty years have passed since the events of 1975 and one of the sources quoted most frequently is ‘Smithy: a Twenty-Year Compendium’ which alludes to the fact that the experiment has an ill-fated ending and obviously has some lingering controversary in the annuals of animal psychology. Some of the later written excerpts use a certain level of hindsight and they add a fascinating contrast to their original comments. What exactly went wrong? This is the million Dollar question and is key to the mystery element presented by the novel, with the uncertainty hanging nicely over proceedings as the chimpanzee ‘Smithy’ quickly picks up new words and delights the bigwigs at Yale University who are funding the project.

Smithy is built around an incredible range of secondary resources which create a believable picture of a 1970s psychology experiment, even if too much of it lacks any sense of horror, no base is uncovered or unexplored. It includes letters from the main characters to their families, diary entries, journal entries (library, kitchen and bedroom), handwritten statements and film footage. All of this helps build the characters who interact with Smithy, in particular Gail Ehrlichto, Tommy Cohento and Ruby Carbinito, who are involved in teaching him sign language and are in their early twenties (very naive) and hoping the project will be a huge positive tick to add to their CVs. Living in a rented rundown mansion, through these characters the author is able to construct an intricate, daily routine of the house whilst slowly weaving in a sense of unease through very small instances where things move or disappear, with poor Smithy often fingered as the culprit. But is he? Ambiguity adds to the fun and atmosphere.

There are further layers of detail for the reader to absorb, concerns over funding lurk in the background, and the reader is also provided with the weekly memos from Wanda Karlewitz (who leads the study) and other interactions from Piers Preis-Herald (who is the overall boss and leader of the experiment) but strangely absent much of the time. Also throw into the mix, notes posted on bulletin boards, weekly word lists for Smithy and many more memos and telegrams. Further excerpts from ‘A Rare Medium’ and ‘Why Chimpanzees Make Bad Mediums’ will give you a vague hint of the direction the story heads into. At a certain point we are even told how many toilets are blocked and what the plumber charged to fix it. Yes, 500-pages was way too long and the author got slightly carried away with her exhausting list of sources!

The Library Journal said of Smithy "This original haunted house tale, with a unique plot and compellingly vivid characters, moves from uneasy to creepy to all-out 'keep the lights on' terror." They obviously thought it was significantly scarier than I did, as I was unconvinced by the supernatural element of the story, which when it did eventually appear, lacked the implied terror this review mentions. Overall, I felt sorry for the chimpanzee, who never got to interact with another of its own kind, was forced to sleep in a bed and wear a nappy. There was little wonder it went mental, starting with small tantrums which slowly escalate. However, it does dance around a question which frequently appears in horror; are animals more likely to see or feel ghosts than we humans are? Smithy provides a nice twist on this idea, but chills could certainly have been ramped up via this part of the story.

However, on the other hand I could also see why Amanda Desiree keeps things relatively restrained. This was a psychological study and was not parapsychology and because of this Smithy is as much about denial as anything else. These scientists cannot talk about ghosts, partly as everything is recorded and talk of the supernatural would see their funding disappear down the river and their study ending up in the dustbin. The group fail miserably to read the chimpanzee’s moods correctly and although everything is very well crafted, considering it is built around so many sources, the reader gets to the ending way before the so-called experts do.

Smithy is not going to be to everybody’s taste, some will find it too slow, or the elements of horror pushed too far into the background in favour of the psychological aspects. However, if you are patient it has a lot to offer, rarely have I seen the epistolary format used so effectively or extensively and the 1970s sense of time and place was superb. Once I got into the rhythm of the style, I enjoyed the wide range of resources presented to the reader and this novel is just as likely to find an audience with thriller fans as it is horror. Sadly, poor old Smithy does not have a voice in the story, which was a shame as I really liked him, and I felt more compassion for him than any of his human ‘family’ who, although they treated him well, did see him as a step onto the next stage of their careers. This was a fascinating debut novel and Amanda Desiree is surely a new name to watch out for in the horror scene.

Tony Jones

"This original haunted house tale, with a unique plot and compellingly vivid characters, moves from uneasy to creepy to all-out 'keep the lights on' terror." --Library Journal, starred review.In the tumultuous summer of 1974, in the shadowy rooms of a rundown mansion in Rhode Island, renowned psychologist Dr. Piers Preis-Herald brings together a group of seven collegiate researchers to study the inner lives of man's closest relative―the primate. They set out to teach their subject, who would eventually be known to the world as Smithy, American Sign Language. But as the summer deepens and the history of the mansion manifests, the messages signed by their research subject become increasing spectral.
Nearly twenty-five years after the Smithy Project ended in tragedy at Trevor Hall, questions remain: Was Smithy a hoax? A clever mimic? A Rorschach projection of humanity's greatest hopes and fears? Or was he indeed what devotees of metaphysics have claimed for so long: a link between our world and the next?