FICTION

JENNIE: A Novel by Douglas Preston (St. Martin’s Press/Wyatt: $21.95; 336 pp.). It’s a classic theme--the ambitious, single-minded scientist who attempts to control nature and ends up being destroyed by forces far greater than himself. Douglas Preston, a science writer based in Santa Fe, may not have had that model in mind when he conceived “Jennie,” but it’s impossible to read the novel without thinking that he’s written a brilliant, complex variation on this time-honored subject. Hugo Archibald, a physical anthropologist at the Boston Museum of Natural History, was on a collecting expedition in the Cameroons in 1965 when he witnessed a dying chimpanzee, shot for its skull, give birth to a daughter. The scientist doesn’t admit to feeling guilt at the orphaning, but he names the baby “Jennie,” brings it home, and changes his family’s life forever. There are countless nonfiction books recounting animal adoptions, and they’re usually feel-good accounts with relatively happy endings; Preston goes much deeper by teasing out the implications of one such tale, showing how a non-human family member can re-constellate lives and reshape beliefs . . . not always for the better. Preston tells Jennie’s story through fictional book excerpts, interviews and telephone conversations, and this unconventional approach works perfectly because it lends the novel immediacy and emphasizes the manifold reactions Jennie inspired. Jennie the character, along with her extended family, are unforgettable creations, and “Jennie” the novel a dazzling fiction debut.