Preview
  • Year of the Monkey

  • By: Patti Smith
  • Narrated by: Patti Smith
  • Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (437 ratings)

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Year of the Monkey

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
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Editor's Pick

A meditative sojourn with a great artist
"This intense, four-hour audio feels like accompanying your Artaud-quoting, Matrix-stanning favorite Aunt through a tough year…if your favorite Aunt is also the Godmother of Punk and a boardwalk shaman. Patti melts down and shapes each loss of lunar year 2016 (A bandmate. A collaborator. The inauguration.) into an exquisite glass bead, strung on the powerful wire of the unconscious. You don’t have to be a Patti Smith fan to love her performance, but it helps to be a dreamer."
Christina H., Audible Editor

What listeners say about Year of the Monkey

Average customer ratings
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

eloquent, evocative, peaceful

Narrated by the author herself, Ms. Smith reveals her eloquent talent to share her life milestones, replete with innocence, joy, wisdom and sorrow. At once a loving eulogy to her best friend, her younger years and the Bay Area, I highly recommend this book.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it

I loved this book. So interesting, so revelatory. Her life, and her storytelling are very thought provoking.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Patti Smith is always interesting!

Basically a memoir, this explores issues of aging related losses and the long term value of youthful experience in processing and living through these losses. The tone is sad and hopeful, and the content consistently interesting.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Genius, beauty, transcendent

A poetic journey so multi-dimensional and equally minimalist I was in a trance as I read.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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As always, a pleasure

it's always a pleasure to spend time with Patti as she rambles around and comments on the state of the world and the state of her own self with humor humility and wonder.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

My heart for Sam

Sam Shepard has been a self-selected father figure to me in my life and the love that is Patty Smith is right there dripping with the same air that fueled Sam. I picture them both in their solid friendship walking pastures with laughter in Midway, Kentucky. I've driven back there three times just to feel that energy, moving down winding roads past horse farms, stone walls and oak trees. Patty floats her art and takes you with her on a gentle breeze. This is a book I will listen to over and over.. Thank You, Patty.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Delightful!

Loved the story! She reads a bit monotone, but I was ok with it. It was read the way one reads a poem, and she's a poet, so there ya have it!

Just get this book. It's good!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Patti Smith is a magnificent storyteller

I enjoyed her voice, choice of words and listening to her dreams and dialogues. She is an amazing poet.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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where reality, poetry,and dreams collide...amazing

I love listening to Patti. So raw, open, and honest. May we never repeat The year of the Monkey.

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5 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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She Pulls Us Through The Mystery

I listened over and over. Her narrative gathers and speaks the deepest places of the soul. Her honesty so bare, with the last thought always of hope. The words are prayers.

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4 people found this helpful