Year of the Monkey

Starred review from July 22, 2019
As she wanders between waking and dreaming in a year filled with the death of a close friend and the political turmoil of the 2016 election, musician and National Book Award–winner Smith (Just Kids) contemplates dreams and reality in this luminous collection of anecdotes and photos. In light of her 70th birthday, Smith writes lyrically on various subjects: she describes Allen Ginsberg’s poetry—which she carries along her travels­—as an “expansive hydrogen bomb, containing all the nuances of his voice.” On the “terrible soap opera called the American election,” she declares that “the bully bellowed. Silence ruled... All hail our American apathy, all hail the twisted wisdom of the Electoral College.” Watching a Belinda Carlisle video, she’s caught up in Carlisle’s infectious beat, and she imagines a “nonviolent hubris spreading across the land.” At one point, Smith learns from a stranger that, in dreams, “equations are solved in an entirely unique way, laundry stiffens in the wind, and our dead mothers appear with their backs turned.” Smith discovers that her most meaningful insights come from her vivid dreams, and she feels a palpable melancholia over having to wake up from them. Smith casts a mesmerizing spell with exquisite prose. Agent: Betsy Lerner: Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary.

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. And since no one else can do justice to her words, Smith narrates her latest audiobook herself. Even if her performance sometimes sounds a bit flat, almost disaffected, it seems appropriate, considering her particular musical style. 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. M.S. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine