Year of the Monkey
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
4.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train, a profound, beautifully realized memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year.
Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs — including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, "Anything is possible: after all, it's the Year of the Monkey." For Smith — inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing — the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.
Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places, this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment set in. But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the listener: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world.
Riveting, elegant, often humorous, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.
Editor's Note
Editor’s pick…
“Year of the Monkey” is a slim and mystical memoir of just one year in Smith’s life, but it’s also a philosophical and poetic examination of time, memory, age, and art. Though there’s plenty of biographical detail to contend with here, the book has more in common with the quiet musings of “M Train” than the more truly biographical nostalgia of “Just Kids.”
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Reviews for Year of the Monkey
18 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poetic as always in her writing. Spending any year looking through the eyes of Patti, is sure to be a majestic and imaginative journey through a love of solitude, and companionship
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