A Forest in the Clouds: My Year Among the Mountain Gorillas in the Remote Enclave of Dian Fossey

Fowler’s memoir of his year spent as a student assistant at the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda conveys delight in and appreciation for gorilla-human relationships. But it is primarily an unflattering profile of camp founder and primate behaviorist Dr. Dian Fossey, best known for her book Gorillas in the Mist, who was murdered at the facility in 1985. Fowler’s descriptions of his interactions with the “miserable” Fossey, whom he calls “good at humiliation and demoralization,” show her as mercurial, foul-mouthed, irritable, often drunk, paranoid, controlling, vehemently possessive of “her” mountain gorillas, and extreme in her response to both research competitors and poachers. Nevertheless, the mood is lightened by descriptions of Fowler’s peers building community by working together in the field, mocking their boss, and secretly indulging in communal dinners despite Dian’s ban on them. Fowler shows incredible warmth in his stories about becoming babysitter and big brother to a rescued baby gorilla and his description of introducing himself to a gorilla group by allowing them to walk all over him, making the emotional whiplash caused by reporting in at the end of the day seem particularly dramatic. Though it’s unclear whether Fowler’s behind-the-scenes report is intended more to take down a celebrity or to add to her dramatic mythology, in the end he has definitely done both. (Feb.)