Bad Monkeys (P.S.) by Matt Ruff - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

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Would you kill Bad Monkeys?	5	47	07/08/2008 07:54AM

Trin rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

09/14/07

bookshelves: american-lit, fiction

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in September, 2007

One of those books that starts out great and then totally falls apart. It opens with Jane Charlotte having been arrested for murder in Las Vegas; when she told the police she’s part of a secret government organization (code name: Bad Monkeys) she ended up in the psych ward. The book is comprised of her interviews with the doctor there alternating with her first person account of her story. For about two-thirds of the book, this is fascinating: Ruff—whose Set This House in Order, about...more

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Brian rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

12/21/07

It's sort of like a runner who starts the race strong, first out of the gate, all eyes are on him. Then he kind of stubs his toe, takes a break, and vigorously walks into the stands looking for an ice cream vendor*.

Sort of.

Trying very hard not to ruin the book, the first half I found extremely compelling. Great premise, well-written, exciting action, good dialog. Read the whole thing in two days. But the more I think about it, the less I like it, because the second half is ever-increasi...more

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Xarah rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

05/15/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in May, 2008

I really liked the plot of this book - an undercover organization getting rid of evil people and all their high-tec, cool gear to go with it.

The book started off really weird and then got even stranger. It did seem that the last 20-30 pages were a little forced, or maybe, the author wasn't sure how he wanted to end the story. It threw me off until I realized what exactly was going on (which it does get explained).

Despite this strangeness, it was overall a good book. Very different than ...more

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Mikol rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

08/19/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: everyone

This was my first read of a Matt Ruff book. I would read one of his earlier books.

This was an easy entertaining read. The whole thing took 2-3 days.

I picked the title up at Santoro's, a bookseller on Greenwood in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood. I was killing time, wanting to sample a snack at "Olivers Twist" down the block that opened at 5pm. I knew that Santoro's was the meeting place for the Seattle Storytellers Guild, an organization I once patronized. I nearly did not ...more

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megan rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

07/26/07

Read in July, 2007

Jane Charlotte is an operative for the underground agency known as bad monkeys. They take care of the evil criminal element in society that the regular law enforcement community can't or won't deal with. Or is she? When we meet her she is in a psych ward, so everything in her highly entertaining story is suspect. And it *is* entertaining, as she describes being recruited into the shadowy group, given her first NC gun (Natural Causes - it allows them to take out the criminal element and make ...more

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Geoff rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

09/06/07

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: People who like Christopher Moore, Tom Robbins, and Matt Ruff

Matt Ruff is one of my favorites. Fool on the Hill was Sci-Fi/fantasy with a college twist. Gas, Sewer, Electric for me fell a little short, seemed a little contrived, but was a good read. Set this House in Order was brilliant, adult, and a tad sad.

Bad Monkeys has elements of all three. It is a little more wry and witty ala Christopher Moore and Tom Robbins, but it also deals with some serious issues (mental health & child abuse). It's a fascinating read on many levels.

I thought...more

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Laura rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

07/04/08

bookshelves: alternate-worlds, mystery-thriller

Read in June, 2008

The backcover of my paperback makes a lot of the The Matrix meets The Silence of the Lambs concept - which almost made me not buy the book - but it really was a page-turner. I tend to like the is-she-insane or is-it-really-happening genre; and the book reads like watching a mostly well-produced thriller. There is one plot twist too many at the very end (I wish clever author boys could find a way to contain their cleverness for the greater good of all humankind) but I enjoyed most o...more

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Powells.com rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

11/24/08

Monkey Shines
A review by Gerry Donaghy

Jane Charlotte works for The Department of Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, a division of a nameless organization dedicated to fighting evil. The nickname for her division is Bad Monkeys, and at the beginning of Matt Ruff's novel of the same name, Jane is being questioned by a police psychiatrist regarding her involvement in a recent murder. When asked if she punishes evil people, Jane responds glibly, "No. Usually we just kill them.&quo...more Monkey Shines
A review by Gerry Donaghy

Jane Charlotte works for The Department of Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, a division of a nameless organization dedicated to fighting evil. The nickname for her division is Bad Monkeys, and at the beginning of Matt Ruff's novel of the same name, Jane is being questioned by a police psychiatrist regarding her involvement in a recent murder. When asked if she punishes evil people, Jane responds glibly, "No. Usually we just kill them." But the victim in question wasn't evil and ensuing interrogation traces Jane's recruitment into the organization and the body count she's accumulated along the way.

Matt Ruff is the kind of author who has yet to write the same book twice. While I was not a fan of his debut novel Fool on the Hill, I was quite impressed with both of his subsequent novels: the Edward Abbey-meets-Ayn Rand-via-Thomas Pynchon flavored Sewer, Gas and Electric, and the achingly stirring tale of multiple personality disorder Set This House in Order. Both are books that I've recommended without hesitation in the past and I'm happy to report that Bad Monkeys can be similarly endorsed.

Bad Monkeys inhabits the same literary space as the drug-fueled paranoia of Philip K. Dick, owing a particular debt to Minority Report. In that story, the protagonist is a detective in a division of the police department that investigates what are called "pre-cog" crimes, arresting perpetrators before they have a chance to act on their impulses. In Ruff's universe, it's not a matter of seeing the future as much as handicapping it, singling out bad seeds and eradicating them. It's not about justice; it's about, as one the Bad Monkeys operatives puts it, "fighting evil in all its forms." Bad Monkeys is an intriguing exploration of moral relativism set in a plot so labyrinthine that it could have sprung from the mind of Borges if he wrote screenplays for Michael Bay. Often the lines between heroes and villains are blurred, and the organization, which is ostensibly fighting for good, engages in surveillance so ubiquitous and undetectable that Alberto Gonzales would be green with envy. And, there is never any explanation as to who charges the Bad Monkeys with their tasks or gave them a license to kill. It's a shadow organization whose umbra gets murkier the longer Jane works for them.

But ultimately, as Jane is being interrogated, her reliability as a narrator is called into question as the psychiatrist presents evidence that refutes her testimony. Ruff throws the reader some astounding curveballs, often necessitating the need to re-read and re-re-read some passages to make tentative sense of what's going on. In this way, Bad Monkeys pleasingly resembles cinematic brain corkscrews such as Memento and The Usual Suspects.

There was a review published recently in Bookforum about Bad Monkeys that not only gave away all of the plot surprises, but was fairly mean-spirited as well, stating, "I give away the surprise ending because I doubt anyone who reads this review will read Bad Monkeys." He then chides the author for not being Nabokov. Maybe I'm just another Kool-Aid drinker, or maybe this Bookforum critic is an irredeemable curmudgeon, but I don't think that's what Ruff was striving for. Rather, he's trying his hand at the pulp genre, writing a book that is practically begging to be turned into a film. Maybe that's a bad thing to some folks. But with a beguiling storyline and taut pacing, Bad Monkeys may not be Nabokov, but it is one hundred percent Matt Ruff. That alone makes it worth recommending. ...less

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Maria rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

08/30/07

bookshelves: next-to-the-bed

Read in August, 2007

I'm a Matt Ruff fan already, and so I knew I'd be getting this the moment I heard about it. Great stuff - out there, and, as the NYT book review said, quite cinematic, in a good way. This book goes deep into strange and shifting territory, wars between good and evil, internal wars between same, a place I always like to go. I might have wished for about 40 pages more in that third act - to perhaps develop some of the myriad plot shifts, but I still really dug the book.

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Patjones rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

09/05/07

Read in September, 2007

Bad Monkeys was an absolute page turner for me (in every possible positive sense of the phrase). It was like Matt Ruff was channeling Neal Stephenson. Through a primarily first person narrative, with a sprinkling of third person interludes, Bad Monkeys questions the

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Audrey rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

07/30/07

Read in July, 2007

There are so many things I love about Matt Ruff novels -- top of the list is the distinctive voice each novel carries. Bad Monkeys was no exception. Although there were times when it felt somewhat derivative of other novels of this type (undercover agency, special ops, whodunit? all mashed together...), Ruff knows how to combine just the right details to keep you reading. Great book -- and the twists at the end just kept coming. Definitely worth reading.

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Chris rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

03/30/08

Read in March, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jen Peel rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

11/27/08

bookshelves: read-post-millenium

Read in November, 2008

recommends it for: 10th grade and up; air, train, tram, and bus travelers.

The cover art for the paperback totally caught my eye, and was wonderfully indicative of its contents. It was a "blink" selection, and I didn't see the plug from Neal Stephenson on the back cover until I finished it about 2 days later, swear to God. I really enjoyed it. I finished it a week ago and I am still enjoying it. On the surface it is a thriller sci-fi tale with goofy humor and sneaky plot twists --a sort of Moll Flanders meets the Matrix. A bit deeper, though, it is a sho...more

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Erin rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

12/29/08

Read in December, 2007

Bad Monkeys was the first book from Matt Ruff that I picked up. I'm so glad I happened upon it in the library - he's quickly earned a place among my favorite authors.

Bad Monkeys is a book that keeps you guessing all the way to the end. It's not a mystery - in fact, I'd be hard-pressed to categorize it all all. It's quirky, with a healthy dose of satire and a storyline with more twists and turns than perhaps anything I've ever read.

I want to be careful not to give anything away, so here...more

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Synsoc rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

03/03/08

Read in January, 2008

Quick, popcorn, with a twist. Perfect subway ride material

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Jenne rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

03/16/08

Read in March, 2008

Matt Ruff has a weeird crazy brain.

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Andrew rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

10/18/08

Read in October, 2008

This book was fun to read while I was reading it but didn't really seem to have that much to it once I'd digested the whole thing. The author says in the P.S. section in the back of the book (which, yes, means I have the trade paperback and not the hardcover--too lazy to fix it, so you're gonna have to deal) that the main character, Jane Charlotte, was inspired by his reading of a Philip K. Dick biography and learning that Dick had a twin sister, Jane Charlotte, who died when they were babies. T...more This book was fun to read while I was reading it but didn't really seem to have that much to it once I'd digested the whole thing. The author says in the P.S. section in the back of the book (which, yes, means I have the trade paperback and not the hardcover--too lazy to fix it, so you're gonna have to deal) that the main character, Jane Charlotte, was inspired by his reading of a Philip K. Dick biography and learning that Dick had a twin sister, Jane Charlotte, who died when they were babies. That's interesting and cool, but I don't know if this book quite lives up to all of that. See, there's one thing about the book that's pretty much accepted without questioning throughout that I just can't accept. That's the idea of "Bad Monkeys".

Let me explain. Jane Charlotte starts the book out captured, in a psychiatric observation wing of a Las Vegas penitentiary. She's telling a psychiatrist the story of how she ended up in jail, and that story is what becomes the entire book. Immediately, we're made very aware that Jane Charlotte is a classic unreliable narrator. She reminded me a whole lot of Kevin Spacey's character in "Usual Suspects". I kept hearing his voice in my head while I was reading this book, saying "Back when I was in that barbershop quartet in Skokie Illinois..." If you've seen the film, you know what I mean. And if you haven't, I shouldn't say anything further, lest I spoil it for you. Anyway, like I said, Jane Charlotte is an unreliable narrator. Almost everything she tells us throughout the book is questionable, and very little of it adds together into a coherent picture. Ultimately, at the end, you expect the entire thing to collapse like a huge house of cards, and maybe it does--I'm not saying. No spoilers for you. What I AM saying is that neither the narrative of the book as a whole nor any characters within the book's narrative ever question the idea that people are inherently good or inherently evil, that they are that way because of predetermined circumstances and that nothing that they do or that happens to them will make the slightest difference, throughout their entire life. This book comes from a very Calvinist perspective, whether the writer knows it or not, and I don't like that. No matter how unrealistic and humorously intended this book is--and rest assured, it is both things--it's still not lighthearted enough for me not to trip, again and again, over the to my mind faulty assertion around which the entire book is based.

And maybe I'd be able to let that slide if the story was better. In fact, I probably could. But it's just not that great of an entry into the madcap humorously-intended probable espionage genre. Maybe the problem is that I read a much better entry into that same genre, Warren Ellis's "Crooked Little Vein", in the very recent past. Or maybe the Calvinist viewpoint of the entire book bothers me more than I let on. But either way, I just didn't take all that much away from this book. It's a fun read, good for a day's entertainment, but no more significant than that. And in the end, it feels like a meal of mostly empty calories. It's the opposite of the sort of books that make you feel, once they're finished, like you have to wait a little while before you can move on to another one. As soon as I set this book down, I was immediately hungry to pick up something else.

One final note--some of the descriptions of Ruff's other books that I have read in various places seem more interesting to me than the premise of "Bad Monkeys", and he's a talented enough writer that I'm definitely open to picking up other books of his in the future. I just don't think this book is the best example of what he has the potential to do....less

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Erica rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

12/04/08

Read in December, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

I've attempted to not give away any pertinant inforation about the story, however if you don't want to know anything at all...don't read this review.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this book when I began reading it and I found my self scrutinizing the book in the beginning. I couldn’t decide if I liked, loved or would place it on the ‘don’t know what to think’ shelf. It was different; written almost entirely from a dialogue point of view, seen almost entirely from one chara...more I've attempted to not give away any pertinant inforation about the story, however if you don't want to know anything at all...don't read this review.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this book when I began reading it and I found my self scrutinizing the book in the beginning. I couldn’t decide if I liked, loved or would place it on the ‘don’t know what to think’ shelf. It was different; written almost entirely from a dialogue point of view, seen almost entirely from one characters point of view and you’re questioning the whole time, ‘Is she crazy, is this real, what will happen at the end’? It didn’t take long before I thought this is starting to get really interesting and strange and I think I like it.

Early on, I only considered two options; she’s crazy and they’ll prove it… She’s not crazy and her “organization” will get her out of this. Usually I can figure out the ending to a book before I read it as most endings are predictable, this one threw me for a complete loop.

It twisted and turned, which augmented my interest in the book and added to the oddity of the story. The entire book was a complete plan that you were not privy to until the last chapter. You were fooled the whole way through. Early on in the book, when she was talking about doing something with her life and yet all she had done was do drugs and jump from job to job I thought it was strange that the good people would want her (and no wonder why they wanted her…)

Later in the book when I almost believed she was good, just lost along the way, I thought I can’t believe they are going to turn her bad when she was trapped by the bad Monkey’s. This is what I loved about the book. I like being kept in suspense until the very end. I like not knowing what’s going to happen until it happens. This book was far from predictable in its outlandishness! And even though it was right there in front of my face, I didn’t really acknowledge the idea of where she was. With all the killing going on around her I truly believed she had been caught and was in a mental institution. Finding out about the doctor was, was the best part!!

The premise behind the book was a great. Jane was a great actress in the story. Attempting to make us believe she’s been hallucinating and creating a vision of people that weren’t really there. At about the halfway mark, I thought her brother is dead and she is imaging him coming to her because she is guilty that she allowed him to be killed. And I think the Evil Jane Twin was really her, she stepped outside of the box and described it as if she was looking through the window. It was her way of describing to us how bad she really was, and thinking the whole time she was fooling us into believing the Bad Monkey’s actually created a twin Jane to attempt to bring her down (which she had me going at one point). The whole story made me really think that she was sick in the head and the end of it proved that even though it all existed (she hadn’t made all of it all up), she was definitely sick in the head!!

Overall, I enjoyed this story and I really liked the book. I’ve given it 4 stars and I would recommend it as a silly, quirky, strange read to any one who likes that kind of book. It was imaginative and interesting…and it was fun to read!!
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Thomas rated it:

(review of isbn 0061240419)

09/17/08

Read in September, 2008

Jane Charlotte is being held in a psychiatric unit and is being questioned about a murder she committed. She tells the doctor the story of her life - kicked out of her house by her mother as a teenager, growing into a life of drugs and poor decisions. In her teens, she has a chance encounter with a serial killer at her school and is saved thanks to the intervention of a secret organization dedicating to fighting evil. From that point on, Jane knows she will one day work for that group.

Alt...more

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Nat rated it:

10/31/08

bookshelves: own

Read in October, 2008

recommended to Nat by: reviewers on Goodreads, Philip Hansen's review
recommends it for: people who love unique twists and a little bit of surrealism

Jane (handcuffed and in a white interrogation room) and her counselor are discussing the organizational term for the people who commit evil aka "Bad Monkeys":

     "Irredeemable persons." The doctor smiles. "Bad monkeys."
     "Right."
     "Shouldn't it be Bad Apes, though?" When she doesn't respond, he starts to explain: "Human beings are more closely related t...more

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