Monkey Boy Lib/E

Our narrator, Francisco Goldberg, has been living and working in Mexico City as a journalist for over a decade, but has recently returned to New York City in hopes of "going home again." It's been five years since the end of his last relationship and he is falling in love again. Soon he is beckoned back to Boston by the high school girlfriend who was witness to his greatest youthful humiliations, and his mother, Yolanda, around whom his story orbits like a dark star. Backdropping this five day trip to his childhood home is the specter of Frank's recently deceased father, Bert, an immigrant from Ukraine, volcanically tempered, pathologically abusive, yet also at times infuriatingly endearing; as well as the high school bullies who gave him the moniker "monkey boy" and his estranged, larger-than-life sister, Lexi. Told in an open, irresistibly funny and passionate voice, this extraordinary portrait of growing up outside the dominant culture unearths the hidden cruelties in a predominantly white, working-class Boston suburb where Francisco--a.k.a. Paco, aka Frankie Gee--came of age. A crowning achievement from one of the most important American voices in the last forty years.

About the Author :
Francisco Goldman has published five novels and two books of nonfiction. His books have been published in sixteen languages. Goldman has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library, and a Berlin Fellow at the American Academy. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also received a 2017 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Prize, and PENMexico's 2017 Award for Journalistic and Literary Excellence. He has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, the Believer, and many other publications. He directs the Aura Estrada Prize (auraestradaprize.org.). He lives in Mexico City. A two-time Audie Award winner, veteran actor Robert Fass is equally at home in a wide variety of styles, genres, characters, and dialects. An eight-time Audie nominee with over 225 unabridged audiobooks to his credit, Robert has also earned multiple Earphones Awards. In addition, his work was listed among AudioFile's Best Audiobooks of the Year in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016, and 2018. Robert has given voice to modern and classic fiction writers alike, including Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck, Carlos Fuentes, Jeffrey Deaver, and Nele Neuhaus, plus bestselling nonfiction works in history, politics, health, journalism, philosophy, and business.

Review :

"Monkey Boy...despite exposing historical, generational, familial denial and horror, ultimately proves to be a beguiling, surprisingly droll portrait of an unsettled middle-aged man (still) searching for love and (self-)acceptance."

"A moving and tender elegy for a woman who seems to have spent most of her life suspended warily between visceral love of her birthplace and learned gratitude for her adopted home."

"An autofictional inquiry into the protean nature of identity, written with disarming candor and grace, blending memory and imagination to transformational effect."

"Enthralling autofiction...A tour de force."

"Reading this book is like reading a family saga, a memoir, and a novel while listening to an old friend telling stories about his life."