BOOK REVIEW : Hybrid Novel of Ex-Rock Groupies

After Roy by Mary Tannen (Knopf: $18.95; 243 pages)

To enjoy this hybrid novel, you must be able to imagine that a woman like Dian Fossey was once a country rock singer in love with the lead musician, Roy. Now, 20 years later, she’s the dedicated primate scholar Maggie Russell, living with a band of chimpanzees in the hypothetical African nation of D’jarkoume, all alone, teaching a tame female chimpanzee named Hilda to become wild again.

Hilda has this re-entry problem because she was raised in captivity at a university, in an experiment designed to prove that chimps can not only learn sign language but grow up to relish TV and fast food, just like American kids.

After leaving the rock group when the love affair ended, Maggie went back to college as a psych major, working part-time for the chimp professor. There she became so fascinated with the experiment that she volunteered to take Hilda back to Africa to see if the learning process could be reversed.

When we meet Maggie, she’s been involved with this project for eight years. Her clothes are in rags, the buildings at the experimental station are falling down, and her only contact with the outside world is an elegant D’jarkoumite named Didier.

Every few months, Didier brings Maggie her supplies, mail and himself. The rest of the time Maggie manages with a part-time factotum named Emanuel and the chimps, to which she’s given human names.

The readaption of Hilda is going slowly, but Maggie has no intention of leaving until the process is complete. She’s being supported in this quixotic venture by an organization called “Friends of Hilda,” to which she writes cheery bulletins bearing virtually no relation to the stark reality of her existence.

D’jarkoume is inhabited by two distinct and hostile ethnic strains--a peasant group who are short in stature, and an aristocratic tribe who are tall. In the course of the novel, the tensions between the groups escalate into civil war, making Maggie’s position even more precarious.

Meanwhile, back in New York, the members of the ‘70’s rock group have settled into new lives. Yolanda, also known as Ollie, one of the other band followers, has become a partner in a bookstore. Prim and spinsterish, she seems the last woman on earth to have been a rock groupie, but visualizing her in that role is a small stretch compared to others we’re asked to make. When Yolanda learns that Maggie is still in Africa, she persuades Sparks, now a composer of film scores, to join her on an impulsive trip to D’jarkoume.

They’ve heard that a song Sparks once wrote was based upon the D’jarkoume anthem, and is presently being used to rouse the people to rebellion.

While dashing off to Africa seems altogether out of character for Yolanda, she’s been reading about the area in adventure stories by a timid writer named Gordon, who does all his research in the New York public library and wouldn’t dream of going farther afield than Englewood, N.J. Though Gordon is in love with Yolanda, he can’t dissuade her from the trip, and she takes off with Sparks, who is conveniently between pictures.

Once that happens, the escapades of Yolanda and Sparks intersect with Maggie’s. What was mere confusion becomes utter chaos, as the reader struggles to identify the huge cast of characters, separate the chimps from the people, and keep them all in their proper places.

By the time Sparks and Yolanda find Maggie in the rain forest, the revolution is well under way, the chimps are reverting to bad habits and food is running low. Finally, he and Yolanda leave, after failing to persuade Maggie to come home with them and scuttle the project.

Instead, she remains in the jungle with nothing to eat but wild figs, only chimpanzees for company and a revolution in full swing. Civilization may have its discontents, but don’t think for a minute that non-civilization is perfect either.

A skillful writer whose first book was both imaginative and plausible, Tannen this time seems to have been unable to decide between a pair of incompatible ideas. Shackling nostalgia to science, “After Roy” is a novel continually at odds with itself.

The shadow lines of the title are borders between nations; that line between oneself and the face in the mirror; between oneself and others. Tridib tried to break through them by imagining. He dies because of the line drawn between Hindus and Muslims, India and Pakistan.

Perhaps May’s shriving is penance for his death. “Do you think I killed him?” she asks. But we know and she knows that Tridib believed in heroes; it may be he sacrificed himself. Perhaps he wished to have a finest hour. He believed, anyway, that “everyone lives in a story. . . .” And perhaps we do.