peteg's blog - noise - books - 2016 12 06 FrancineProse MisterMonkey

Francine Prose: Mister Monkey.

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Kindle. Its presence in the New York Times list of 100 notable books for the year prompted me to give it a go; Cathleen Schine's earlier review did not, even though she got it mostly right. The book is structured around various participants in a fiasco of a production of the fictional children's musical Mister Monkey, spiralling outward to embrace current-day New York City. I am not convinced that the Monkey God/Hanuman would deign to be reincarnated as a bratty twelve-year-old boy living in Battery Park, but leaving that aside, Prose does a fantastic job with the structure and tales of unquiet desperation. I enjoyed the theatrical setting.