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  • Year of the Monkey

  • Written by: Patti Smith
  • Narrated by: Patti Smith
  • Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (28 ratings)

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Year of the Monkey

Written by: Patti Smith
Narrated by: Patti Smith
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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

What the critics say

"Her best days as a punk rock priestess may be behind her, but even at age 70, Patti Smith is still a working-class hero asking questions about life, love, and dreams.... She delivers wry observations of contemporary life, hers and the nation's. Her observations, imagery, and iconic non-rhyming poetry can best be appreciated when delivered by the artist herself. The memoir is a little bit of a lot of things, all tied up in a stream-of-consciousness trip across the country and across her own life as she enters her septuagenarian years." (AudioFile Magazine)

"Smith began writing Year of the Monkey on New Year’s Day 2016, a transformative year for the artist that brought aging, the loss of friends, and overall disillusionment. Juxtaposed with this personal narrative are Smith's descriptions of western landscapes she visited.... Fact and fiction increasingly blur, a combination made surreal by Smith's obsession with details that keep popping up in various locations.... A gripping tale of the search for meaning in times of turbulence - expressed with Smith’s signature poetic flair." (Christian Allaire, Vogue

"In this slim, hallucinatory volume, Smith roves the country in real time, visiting favorite haunts, hitching rides with strangers, contemplating the fuzzy border between waking and dreaming, and mourning the results of the 2016 presidential election. But just as a sense of gloom begins to settle, the sun peeks through the clouds. For while 'there is nothing in heaven like the suffering of real life...,' she writes, 'I still keep thinking something wonderful is about to happen.'" (The Oprah Magazine

"Smith’s grace and erudite philosophy is a welcome balm in these times.... Her latest memoir is an introspective look at her year of solo wandering - she documents that year’s massive political and social change her own lyrical way. The American canon is littered with 'road trip memoirs,' but if there’s a voice we’d want to add to that genre, it would be Smith." (Town & Country

What listeners say about Year of the Monkey

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The year of the Monkey

I struggled to finish the book as her voice was monotone and I would fall asleep.

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Just wondering what she was all about

Couldn’t figure it out - some groovy tagalong chic behind a 70s boy band. Or a druggie jail bird (like her voice sounds?) Sort of known name, but I’m sure not spending another minute trying to find out. The one star review is there just to prove that I tried

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Great, as usual

I love Patti's writing. This is the first time I've heard an audio from her, having had paper copies of her other books. I just loved her narration.. that voice! It really made it for me. You rule, Patti.

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Patti Smith the literary muse

Listening to this audiobook read by Patti is, for the true Smith fan, the most sublime and richly rewarding listen. Her poetic voice, surrealistic associations, threads of Dreamtime, monkey business, rabbit wisdom, and the souls of dear old friends weave throughout this memoir in a magical, hyper-reality state of motion, life as journey, journey as life. As a winter, Patti gets better and better. A true gem, a love song, a prophetic tribute to lasting truths in an era of misinformation. A literary triumph.

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