Year of the Monkey

By: Patti Smith

Narrated by: Patti Smith

Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

Riveting, elegant, and humorous, New York Times best seller Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times. 

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, in which she debates intellectual grifters and spars with the likes of a postmodern Cheshire Cat. Then, in February 2016, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. For Smith - inveterately curious, always exploring, always writing - this becomes a year of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. 

Taking us from California to the Arizona desert, from a Kentucky farm to the hospital room of a valued mentor, Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape in a haunting, poetic blend of fact and fiction. As a stranger tells her, “Anything is possible. After all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.” 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. 

Named one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year - now including a new chapter, "Epilogue of an Epilogue" - Year of the Monkey “reminds us that despair and possibility often spring from the same source” (Los Angeles Times). 

©2019 Patti Smith (P)2019 Random House Audio

M Train Meets Naked Lunch

In yet another beautiful piece of writing, Patti Smith seamlessly interweaves everyday, ordinary moments with dream life so that we're often unsure whether a scene or conversation is occurring in real life, in her imagination, or in her dreams. If you liked M Train, you'll probably like this too, though M Train is far more focused on the quotidian--the minutiae of everyday routines and occurrences that come together to make up a life. This book reminded me a lot of the film David Cronenburg made of Burroughs's Naked Lunch: dreams and reality melting together, leaving us a bit off-kilter. In the end, it hardly matters what is real and what is dreamed, and it seems Smith wants the reader to not only know this is the case but to experience that bleed-through and uncertainty through her. Her prose mimics her content, mellifluously melting and flowing--though this appears to be her natural writing voice, as it is consistent throughout all of her books. This book is not for someone who is attached to plot or needs something to be accomplished, overcome or changed. If the only book of hers you've read is Just Kids, understand that Year of the Monkey--like M Train--is not so tied to story, nor as focused as Just Kids, but is more conceptual and presents itself as stream-of-consciousness; though, clearly, her intent in constructing it is deliberate. As she follows her mind's tangents along threads that deal with one's duty to others, mortality and the loss of treasured friends and family members, political upheaval and despair, and the beauty of simple moments captured by memory, she also traipses the geographic landscape from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, San Diego, LA, New York, Kentucky, and Virginia. I so loved her reading of the book that I now want to reread M Train, this time listening on Audible, so that I can hear her read it. I love how her deep voice, flat intonation and South Jersey/Philadelphia accent bring her prose to life.

ADDENDUM: I just re-listened to this book, after first revisiting M Train, which I had originally read in print (see my review of it) as an audiobook. Listening to the two books back to back was fascinating. I could see how Year of the Monkey was in some ways a continuation of what Smith started in M Train while in other ways freeing herself from the strictures of reality. This time around I chuckled to myself as she here and there retraced her steps back through the storyline, reminding the reader where a thread began and seemingly daring us to decide--was it all a dream? Was any of it real?

Patti’s Voice

This book is a book of stories and poems. Good stories and poems land best in the oral tradition. Patti’s voice brings the poetry and stories together wonderfully. This is a book I preferred to listen to than to read.

where reality, poetry,and dreams collide...amazing

I love listening to Patti. So raw, open, and honest. May we never repeat The year of the Monkey.

Poetry in story, story in poetry

In dreamlike prose, Patti Smith tells a story of loss and beauty, hope and anxiety, art and destruction. Her characters are drawn in broad brushstrokes that render their lives complex, contradictory, whole. This book is a dream bracketed by the quotidian world, the story of life bracketed by the boundaries of the body. It was not at all what I expected. I loved it. It certainly will now be everyone’s cup of tea. But honestly, I think it probably makes the world a more compassionate place by its mere existence.

She Pulls Us Through The Mystery

I listened over and over. Her narrative gathers and speaks the deepest places of the soul. Her honesty so bare, with the last thought always of hope. The words are prayers.

Monkey poet

An intense and poetic autobiographical account of Patti Smith's process of moving through this exceptional life. The reader, or in my case listener, needs not be of a monkey mind.

Inimitable Writing from and Inimitable Voice

Really beautiful writing by Patti. Her voice and words draw you in to her mind and open a door into your own, the listener/reader. A good listen to help one reflect on one's own life and the meanings of our lives themselves.

not as good as JUST KIDS but still good

JUST KIDS was about Maplethorpe and her relationship with him so he became another focal point. this book is really just about Patti and her view of almost everyone in her life...except Maplethorpe. so at times it seems like she is trying to show us how deep she is. But at heart she is a poet so the rythem of her words is hypnotic. I wanted to put this book down several times but I kept being drawn in by it's soothing tones and her cultural encounters. she is a totally unique and thoughtful woman. and, everyone would enjoy her insight.

Excellent reading.

A powerful reading by author of her thoughtful and poignant book. It seems to be a stream of consciousness or a dream state retelling. Loved it!

A Weak Ramble

This book is for those from the boomer era who enjoyed rock music of the high brow New York punk sort from the 1970s. For those readers the book will be enchanting. Patti Smith has a dreadful speaking voice, her singing voice reminds me of a gothic Teresa Brewer which is not uncomplimentary. Her English is what could kindly be called, spoken and very unwriterly. I wanted to hear the book for its section on Santa Cruz California where she visited and is described rather unrealistically and perfunctorily. She also recalls the late Sam Shepard which is the most interesting part.