Though his first novel, “Life Among Giants,” was a bestseller and the ones since (among them “The Remedy for Love” and most recently “Lucky Turtle”) have won acclaim, Roorbach is something of a cult figure. He’s not a household name, but those who know his work typically revere him as one of the jewels in the state of Maine’s crown of novelists. While “Beep” is a dramatic departure from his previous realist fiction, the bold imagination, wry humor and sense of connection to the environment are familiar — just dialed up to the max — in service of a strong message about climate change.

“I am Beep, monkey. I live in the world of monkeys near saltwater on the sunset side of the vast beyond.” So Beep introduces himself and goes on to color in his world. “I like this river we live near partly because the goers don’t come here much, except to look at the birds, our beautiful and distant cousins.” The goers are also called “you-mens,” and while “many are pleasing to look at, with fabulous black cushions of hair, or golden hair long as orchid tendrils, others with tresses red as sunsets,” many “are pure terror: loud, careless, unaware of the lives their sudden movements end.” Except for the type called growers, who bring food from the ground, the goers pretty much destroy everything they touch.

Fortunately, the old uncles speak of a monkey whose accidental courage will save the world.

Saving the world is not what Beep has in mind when he leaves his troupe on a quest — his goal is to find a mate he’s not related to, and perhaps to see the famous “smoking mountain” on the way. What he finds first is “a pretty you-men tween sitting in a contraption eating something off a piece of tree chopped flat and set on stilts. I sniffed voluptuously: pineapple! ”

This is Inga, who is going to change his life by taking him home to “Madhattan” secreted among her stuffies, first dressing him in “a smart pea-coad” and “jagget and pamps” stripped off a doll. And there, after an encounter with Greta Thunberg and a trip to “Bronzoo,” Beep will fulfill his destiny, which turns out to be a rather unexpected and not totally pleasant version of saving the world.

First, though, he must learn everything from how to use “dars” to get in and out of rooms to how best to deal with “noblemen,” his category for all the many uniformed people who play such a large role in you-men activity. Roorbach has tons of fun with Beep’s perceptions and evolving understanding of the human environment. For example, he notices an object on Inga’s “tavle” — see, no longer just hunk of tree on stilts — that he figures out is “our home in simulacrum,” as seen from a “rogget.”

As he is examining the blue and green sphere and thinking hard, Inga returns with something called “beetza,” whose “provenance was very mysterious, though there was animal involved, and the general echo of samweedge and prezzel.”

Inga is one of the “sensitives,” humans who can learn to communicate telepathically (called “moodling), and on this basis, communication blossoms. One afternoon, as Inga is pushing him through “Centrall Pargh” in her doll stroller, Beep is successful in asking her to stop so he can snatch up a tasty-looking slug from the sweltering pavement.

“Bless you monkey for ending my misery on that sidewalk,” moods the slug.

What for some readers will be great fun will probably drive others away. Why do these animals sound like philosophers half the time and like illiterates the other half? Then there are a lot of potentially shark-jumping plot points and a surprisingly dark ending. Roorbach has said he “wanted to write something funny and inspiring that would carry its urgent message quietly behind its back, only in the end to knock readers over the head with it like a Buddhist monk with his staff.” That he does — and uses some Buddhist monks to assist along the way.

Anyway, “Beep” can’t be a cult classic if it’s for everybody. You know who you are.

Marion Winik, host of the NPR podcast “The Weekly Reader,” is the author of numerous books, including “First Comes Love” and “The Big Book of the Dead.”