Patti Smith's Poetic Tribute to the Chinese Zodiac Sign of the Monkey: Year of the Monkey

Julie dearden: Patty Smith’s book , just like the last two books, didn’t disappoint me. This was well written, insightful, and a bit sad. Very good, I highly recommend reading this book. It’s not just for her fans, just because it’s a must read.

United Kingdom on Sep 03, 2023

Jill: I cannot figure out how can Patti Smith write about anything without actually talking about anything. This book is similar to M Trian, a collection of pages from her travel journal, including her photos, with the difference that she also makes us participants in her dreams - The Year of the Monkey is a solitary journey, a dreamlike journey, much more melancholic and depressing, the author is embarking on: she writes poetically about the losses she suffers in her private, losses that plague her country, but still Patti as an optimist human being, keeps cheering herself up by thinking that something wonderful is about to happen, maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.

Italy on Mar 22, 2023

kitty kat: I enjoyed reading it, but it's definitely not a book for everyone. It wanders, but it's Patti Smith, so not unexpected at all. If you're looking for something out of the ordinary, you may want to check this one out. Her best book, in my opinion, is still JUST KIDS. Definitely the best.

United States on Dec 03, 2022

DianaPrince: I love Patti Smith's writing. This book was a fun hole to fall into, a quick meandering read that is nothing like Just Kids but I loved it just as much.

Canada on Nov 29, 2022

SMF: The novel was a visual and narrative poem as the author enters her 70th year facing the loss of people who meant the world to her. Everything has meaning to her with layers and layers of memories on streets, bars, books, photographs, hotel rooms. Dreaming while haunted. I'm entering my 60th year and loss is happening. I will outlive people I've known all my life. I felt a sense of peace reading the book. You live long enough. daily life becomes a mix of dreams, memories, and present.

United States on Jul 10, 2022

HEMANGINI CHASIA: I could read this again to feel the feelings once more. Patti Smith never disappoints

India on Dec 19, 2021

Chaitanya Sethi: Third in her autobiographical series, 'Year of the Monkey' is the lived account of Patti Smith negotiating her life in 2016, building up to Trump's win. Written in her distinct voice, one that melds dream-like visions into fact, fiction, and anecdotes, it was perhaps the saddest of her memoirs. Age and life were catching up to those around her, and this book covers the loss of two of her closest friends.

"The grains pour and I find myself missing the dead more than usual. I notice that I cry more when watching television, triggered by romance, a retiring detective shot in the back while staring into the sea, a weary father lifting his infant from the crib. I notice that my own tears burn my eyes, that I am no longer a fast runner and that my sense of time seems to be accelerating."

Dreams, and dreaming were a prominent motif. As someone who dreams daily but remembers little of it, I am amazed how vividly Patti can recall her dreams and weave it into an autobiographical narrative in a bohemian, mystic way where it elevates itself from the status of a nightly occurrence to a strange cosmic communication channel where friends and family speak across time and...

India on Oct 06, 2021

Gerania: The Year of the Monkey was a different animal from M Train, the preceding Patti Smith book I read. Poignant clarity characterized the latter, while Year of the Monkey lapses in and out of slightly hallucinogenic magical realism, still poignant. The book’s first and second halves (using the term loosely, not mathematically) don’t quite mesh. In the first, Patti embarks on an elegiac road trip that was supposed to include a friend, who fell mortally ill. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not on this journey, as hard as it is coming to terms with a life bereft of friends one has known for 40 years. In the second half of the book, Patti reflects on the Van Eyck brothers’ celestial oeuvre and succumbs to its lure via a pilgrimage. Maybe because of all the loss she’s suffered, Patti seems to view everything in her environment, whether organic or inorganic, as weighted with significance. At first I didn’t get what other reviewers meant by complaining of name-dropping, but I finally realized they were referring to the literary and artistic allusions sprinkling the narrative. She has committed the ultimate sin, in the USA, of (a) being erudite and (b) not pretending...

United States on Sep 14, 2021

R. C. Brusca: Patti Smith is one of the most creative artists of our time. Her new book, "Year of the Monkey," is further testimony to the inventive mind of an original and innovative virtuoso. As she drifts up and down the Pacific Coast, and back and forth across the country, a “diary” of her thoughts becomes transformed into text, giving readers an intimate look into her mind and her thinking—Patti Smith about to turn seventy. Not only is the concept and the prose unique, but the grammatical and stylistic choices she has made with the book are singularly distinctive. Not sure I’ve seen another book like this since the days of the 1950s modernist writing. (Richard C. Brusca: author of "In the Land of the Feathered Serpert" and about two-dozen other books)

United States on Aug 03, 2020

CS: ”Marcus Aurelius asks us to note the passing of time with open eyes. Ten thousand years or ten thousand days, nothing can stop time, or change the fact that I would be turning seventy in the Year of the Monkey. Seventy. Merely a number but one indicating the passing of a significant percentage of the allotted sand in an egg timer, with oneself the darn egg. The grains pour and I find myself missing the dead more than usual. I notice that I cry more when watching television, triggered by romance, a retiring detective shot in the back while staring into the sea, a weary father lifting his infant from a crib. I notice that my own tears burn my eyes, that I am no longer a fast runner and that my sense of time seems to be accelerating.”

This often reads as though it were written under a fever-dream and other times the random musings of the poet ”…plucking inspiration from the erratic air”, all the while trying to focus on the things which are established, and her memories of the years gone by. At this point in her life, she has just celebrated her 69th birthday, is contemplating turning seventy in the coming year, concerned over two friends whose health was rapidly...

United States on Nov 23, 2019