The Woman and the Ape is a novel published by the Danish author Peter Høeg in 1996. The novel came after another series of novel that were well received but unfortunately, The woman and the ape was not as well received as the novels before it and this prompted the author to stop writing for a period of ten years.
In The Woman and the Ape, Peter Høeg presents an unlikely relationship between two beings, a woman from London named Madelene and an ape that is brought by mistake to her house. Before meeting the ape, Madelene was an alcoholic who did not find any type of pleasure in her life. After meeting the ape however, she became determined in saving it and she did everything she could to help the ape escape form her husband’s experiments.
The novel did not receive many positive reactions namely because it was considered by many as being too complicated and too ambiguous. The general belief is that while the book works as an allegory or essay, it does not work as a novel because the characters remain undeveloped and because the way the setting is described is also dissatisfactory.
