Saint Monkey: A Novel
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"[A] compelling debut…Townsend's writing [is] full of fresh turns of phrase and keen insights." —Ayana Mathis, New York Times Book Review
Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she’ll never get out of Kentucky—but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County.
That is, until chance intervenes and a booking agent offers Audrey a ticket to join the booming jazz scene in Harlem—an offer she can’t resist, not even for Caroline. And in New York City the music never stops. Audrey flirts with love and takes the stage at the Apollo, with its fast-dancing crowds and blinding lights. But fortunes can turn fast in the city—young talent means tough competition, and for Audrey failure is always one step away. Meanwhile, Caroline sinks into the quiet anguish of a Black woman in a backwards country, where her ambitions and desires only slip further out of reach.
Jacinda Townsend’s remarkable first novel is a coming-of-age story made at once gripping and poignant by the wild energy of the Jazz Era and the stark realities of segregation. Marrying musical prose with lyric vernacular, Saint Monkey delivers a stirring portrait of American storytelling and marks the appearance of an auspicious new voice in literary fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Townsend's debut novel chronicles the lives of two black girls growing up in the dusty Appalachian mountains of Kentucky in the era of segregation. As children, Audrey and Caroline are bound together by their unpopularity, and their friendship quickly deepens, as they buffer each other against the cruelties that their small world hurls at them. They share adolescent angst and their wild dreams for the future, but when Caroline's father brutally murders her mother, Audrey and Caroline's friendship is changed in ways neither girl fully understands. They grow apart during high school, colliding occasionally, but Caroline is busy with boys and Audrey recedes into a quiet life of reading and playing piano for her grandfather, later finding work as a jazz musician in Harlem. The freedom and energy of Harlem sing through Audrey as she trades her country sandals for stilettos and spends her evenings listening to legends like Thelonious Monk and Ethel Waters. Back home, Caroline struggles to take care of her ailing grandmother and bring some money into the house. There are some clumsy moments in the prose, but Townsend captures both the girls' relationship and the desperation of the small, black community in Appalachia.
