Monkey Boy: A Novel

by Francisco Goldman

A Guatemalan-American writer returns to the Boston suburb of his youth in this American Book Award–winning novel “full of rebellious comedy and vitality” (New Yorker).A 2022 Pulitzer Prize FinalistIn Monkey Boy, Francisco Goldman’s “brilliantly constructed auto-fiction” (NPR), we meet Francisco Goldberg, a middle-aged writer grappling with the challenges of family and love, legacies of violence and war, and growing up as the son of immigrants.Having fled Mexico after his journalism provokes the wrong people, Goldberg’s attempt to start fresh in New York. But even as he finds himself falling in love, he is drawn away yet again—back to his childhood home in the white, working-class suburbs of Boston.Frankie is beckoned there by a high school girlfriend who witnessed his youthful humiliations, and by his ailing mother, Yolanda, whose intermittent lucidity unearths forgotten pockets of the past. His brief trip is haunted by memories of his recently deceased father, the Guatemalan woman who helped raise him, and the high school bullies who called him “monkey boy.”

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Race, Audiobook, Mental Health

344 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 4, 2021

About the author

Francisco Goldman is an American novelist, journalist, and 'maestro', at Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), the journalism school for Latin-America created by Gabriel García Márquez. Goldman is also known as Francisco Goldman Molina, "Frank" and "Paco".

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Guatemalan mother and Jewish-American father. His first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens (1992), won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and his second, The Ordinary Seaman (1997), was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He currently resides in Mexico City and Brooklyn, New York. He also teaches at Trinity College (Connecticut).

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[TheBookWarren · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.50 Stars (Rnd ⬆️) — Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to read this one free of charge in exchange for a fair review.

Something about this cover is extremely striking and alluring to me. One of those “read me please” covers that had I seen on-shelf I’d undoubtedly have to reach and pull down for a quick once over.

Reading this one back in June 2021, I’ve been compelled to now listen to the audiobook thanks to the preview playing and again piquing my interest Cover got me again? Perhaps). One noticeable difference in the audiobook is the beautiful pacing of this protagonists thoughts. It’s a metronome of thought, that when read aloud is extremely noticeable and striking. The authors intellect and prose on show even greater than I recall.

Reading this at a fast pace, I was struck by the schism of experience I had towards it, almost on a page by page basis. I really enjoy Goldman’s prose, he has a distinctly charismatic voice, that mixes a subtle underpaying-nonchalance of rather dramatic events, with a propensity for being efficiency. It makes for enjoyable sentence-by-sentence reading, but to begin with, does so at a cost of the overall narrative sometimes not quite landing the way it would be expected to. Over time though, picking it back up after a day or so, I found it growing on me as a memoir & once I got a feeling of understanding the context & layered story-telling, I was hooked.

Telling the story of Francisco’s youth whilst on route to visit his ageing mother in her current Nursery home dwelling, the flashes we get of a youth filled with violent, traumatising yet poignant experiences, is richly rewarding and heartfelt, without being romanticising. Frank deals with what was clearly a difficult relationship with his father in a disparate way, that I found both irksome yet terribly engaging. The clever prose, considered pacing and irrepressible fluidity are extremely moorish!

This book has remained with so much that’s it’s now a must re-read, not something I saw coming — but a note worth mentioning and that commands a potential re-rating shortly! I was spot-on here, the audiobook has bumped this Francisco Goldman gem to very bear 5 Stars. 4.5 rounded-up is almost perfection. It’s as good a rating mere mortals achieve for me of late, only Adam Levin, Franzen, Westlake, McDowell’s fiction or nonfiction King Patrick Radden Keefe or Tom Holland seem to draw this from my system.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frank Goldberg, nearly fifty, moved back to New York, from Mexico City after receiving a warning that he probably could have ignored but didn’t.
“The warning was the result of the journalism on the murder in Guatemala of a bishop, the country’s greatest human rights leader, including the book I published less than two years ago”.

Frank was excited about this trip to Boston. He was looking forward to meeting Marianne Lucas, an old friend from 34 years ago, when they were in 10th grade. She was a family and divorce lawyer now - divorced her self.
She sent him an email after hearing him speak and NPR. He was talking about the character- Jose Marti- in his novel that he had just finish called, “The House of Pain”.

Frank had only been friends with Marianne for a few months back in 10th grade. It was Ian Brown who provoked them not speaking any longer. It was Ian Brown who nicknamed Frank, ‘Monkey Boy’.

Frank wondered what Marianne wanted to talk about after so many years — other than Ian Brown. In reality, not much it ever happened between Frank and Marianne.
They’d had only been close for a few months. 15 year olds.
Frank wondered if Marianne remembered their nightly phone conversations, or when he was beat up his father.m
He remembers that soon Marianne was into Jimmy Gleason— whom she married before high school graduation.

The story jumps around from character to topic....to more characters and tidbit stories about many minor characters.
I found it hard to consistently enjoy the book.
One minute Frank is talking about a guy named Mickey Dumps - or Hank Riggo and Sons, the contractors—
or a guy named Bonks who used to drive Frank and Marianne in his car — and the next minute about the Sinatra Rat Pack — and the next minute we’re back to Frank remembering things like:
“Aww Monkey Boy, don’t fucking get started with the Marianne Lucas bullshit again” .....and what she did with Ian Brown’s dick.
Frank felt that if he didn’t respond, back in high school, life was over—the possibility of violence made him nauseous with fear.
“Fucking Monkey Boy, can’t take a joke”.
Next moment we’re hearing about a fight between Rizza and Joe. Headlock and pounding faces, splatters of blood on the enamel like a Catholic miracle?/!....
The book kept losing me. I kept wondering what’s the purpose of all this?

We learned early — Frank was returning to Boston, an American writer, after spending a decade in Guatemala. He would visit his aging sick mother - and visit his sister Lexi.

“Lexi and I are both unmarried. Neither of us have given our mother what she says she most wants, a grandchild. Just a coincidence, maybe? You can’t just go around blaming your family, your town, for that kind of thing, not at our age.
But somehow take away my upbringing, take away Gary Sacco, Ian Brown, Arlene Fertig, and even what happened with Marianne Lucas, take away Monkey Boy and Gols, and who would I be? Would it be as if I never walk the earth? But I have walked the earth, and it’s been a super long walk, and all of that is far in the past. Except I am seeing Marianne Lucas tonight. If nothing else, our dinner will be the only high school reunion I ever go to”

A taste of mom:
“Forgive the US for what, Ma? She clucked her teeth as if she’d already changed your mind. Ay, Frankie, people like me, from Guatemala, Hispanic people, we aren’t treated with respect in this country. But seeing my son honored, she said, her voice going dreamy again, by all those important people, I felt we are accepted now, so now I can become a US citizen.
I thought, You know what, Mamita? Even if I’d written
‘Don Quixote’ and won that prize, that wouldn’t have been enough to merit your monumental act of forgiveness.
Originally my mother hadn’t been so thrilled about my book. It featured a family that resembled ours in obvious ways, except the father was earthy, kind, and nurturing, and the mother character was brassily seductive and obliviously but comically assertive about her prejudices. Of course she’s not you, Mamita, I’d explained countless times. I made her the opposite of you so that you couldn’t say I’d written about you. But now people think I am like that! my mother insisted”.


The memories of Frank’s child and teen days were absolutely awful — abusive and humiliating.

Between memories of the flashing blue lights of the police coming and people shouting, “fuck the pigs”.... and someone staggering toward a bush to vomit, .....
eventually, I just wanted the book to end.

Parts were engaging - with intimate dialogue — and I appreciated that Monkey Boy is autobiographical fiction ....making me feel really sad for Francisco Goldman. It was painful to think about the regular beatings Francisco/Frank got from his father as a child — and the verbal violence against his mother and sister.

Finally.....about half way into this book.....Frank and Marianne meet. Back stories behind us? Not on your life! There are more.

Marianne was a family and divorce lawyer with her own practice in Boston. Frank was kind of thunderstruck that Marianne looked great, fit and prosperous.
From their Facebook chats, Marianne knew that Frank’s father had died a few years back at the age of 93 and that her dad had died around the same time in his mid-70s.
But Frank was ready to get to the point…[ME TOO]....
why did Marianne asked to meet Frank after all these years?
Frank reminds us, again, ( for the third time), that they had only been close for a few months and 10th grade.
I felt lost and was emotionally disconnecting from this novel - again- ( for about my third time too).

Now we’re talking about Joe Botto and a guy name Space — drinking cool beer from a six pack— then French soldiers who were going to freeze outside in Moscow.
Next I’m reading about Natasha Rostova, who falls for Anatole Kuragin in the novel that Ian Brown wrote.
Meanwhile, Frank was visualizing kissing Marianne
during their ‘reunion’.
Then Frank was back remembering again the last time he kissed Arlene Fertig.
And then....
poor Prince Andrei...
My God...I was exhausted!
I just couldn’t hold onto anything — and it seemed Marianne was a cruel reminder of Frank’s past.....‘keeper-of-Frank’s-youthful-humiliation’.

I couldn’t stay interested enough about the nickname of ‘Monkey Boy’ any longer ( other than I felt sad that this was true)....

I guess, Marianne was trying to tell Frank that Monkey Boy was a racist thing— and that he was just thought of as another Jewish boy (even as a halfie) ‘Halfie’? .....
.....such a distasteful slang word for a person of mixed race
Monkey Boy, Chimp Face, halfie, started for Frank back in middle school. All these years later .... the memories remain. ( of course - they were devastating).
However, ...
forgive me....I didn’t have the desired energy to learn about one more character—Bob Cratchit?.....or who spoke Spanish— or learn about who wore baseball caps—or other classmates...and ‘their stories’.

I finished this book drained- early this morning.
Perhaps part of it is my fault… Trump is probably officially being impeached today.
My local hospital has confirmed 77 medical workers have tested positive for covid. The hospital is at 0% capacity. It’s the hospital I need.
I guess this book — for me -just might have been the wrong book at the wrong time.
I’m distracted—but usually can still read.
It’s just that this story would have been a challenge for me in the best of times.

Even though parts of the story had feelings of ‘intimate-warmth’ ....(due to Frank’s voice as the narrator), overall...the writing felt too scattered for me.
It might not other readers.
Francisco Goldman, himself, is an interesting man. He taught at Columbia University and the MFA program.... has written numerous of books....and has won numerous awards.

There was just too much to hold onto for me in ‘Monkey Boy’
- yet....I feel honored to have learned more about Francisco.

I am sad to learn that Francisco Goldman had a horrific childhood...
Bullying and repeating bearings? Breaks my heart to hear this happening to any child.

Thank you - always - Grove Atlantic, Netgalley, and Francisco Goldman

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the story of Francisco Goldberg, the alter ego of the author Francisco Goldman, who, now approaching 50, returns to the US after working as a journalist in Mexico City and where it has now become too dangerous for him. Half Guatemalan, half American, half Jewish, half Catholic, his is a complicated heritage. Now retracing his roots, the narration jumps about from character to character (and there are far too many of them), from place to place, from time to time. This fractured narrative may reflect Frank’s memories, but doesn’t always make for easy reading, and I often found myself becoming disengaged. There’s some fine writing here, and some very evocative passages, especially those concentrating on Frank’s childhood, but overall I felt that the book was too long and unduly fragmented. Some passages were actually quite tedious, not least the final pages when he reminisces about a painter friend of his family. Many commentators have found the book funny, which I didn’t, and moving, which I only did on occasion. Overall this wasn’t one that held my attention or my sympathies.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author is in my opinion a wonderful writer. I love details in a story and his are full of them.
I know this is a novel, but I think it probably has a lot of his own life written throughout.
I read his first book “The Long Night of White Chickens” years ago and like it very much.
The main character in this book, Francisco Goldberg, relives his life growing up with a mother from Guatemala, Yolanda and his father Bert, an immigrant from Ukraine.
This book is so full of interesting people and places, and the way he weaves the stories from childhood to middle age, through the things that affected him most growing up.
His stories about Guatemala were of major interest to me, as I was there for a lot of what he talked about.
Great story, and I cant wait to read the other ones I have of his.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for a copy of this book.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Monkey Boy: A Novel Audible Logo Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
Francisco Goldman (Author), Robert Fass (Narrator), Tantor Audio (Publisher)
Listening Length 12 hours and 12 minutes

Scattered storytelling with a lot of painful memories, I tired of it before it ended, but I do that many things.

[jam · Rating 2 out of 5]

do i think that if i were a) a man and b) the youngest sibling that this book would have been more appealing? yes. unfortunately, i am neither.

goldman tackles some really important themes regarding identity, immigration, belonging, etc., but unfortunately i despise his tone and his writing style -- and that's just the way she goes!

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two short passages from Monkey Boy:


*


That line from the Iliad, “Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed.”


*


Proust wrote in his novel that a man, during the second half of his life, might become the reverse of who he was in the first. When I first read that a few years ago I liked the line so much I wrote it down and put it into my wallet. Then I found a similar one in Simenon’s The Prison: “Alain Poitaud, at the age of thirty-two, took only a few hours, perhaps only a few minutes, to stop being the man he had been up to that time and to become another.” I decided to fill a notebook with quotes conveying that sense of the possibility of a seemingly magical personal metamorphosis, but then I didn’t come across many more. But I did find this one by Nathaniel Hawthorne that’s like the others but with an intriguing twist: “In Wakefield, the magic of a single night has wrought a similar transformation, because, in that brief period, a great moral change has been affected. But this is a secret from himself.” Something, even overnight, has changed you for the better, but you’re not even aware of it. But can’t it be something that has been building for years and that finally gathers enough weight, even from one day to the next, to tip over from bad into better or even into good? How will you know? Because someone will love you who wouldn’t have yesterday.


*

[Milly Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ya me anda por reseñar este libro, y aunque me faltan unas pocas páginas, comienzo un poco porque luego se me alborotan las ideas y las pierdo. Amo a Francisco desde que leí el libro Di su nombre, me dolió tantísimo lo que ahí cuenta que me costó recuperarme. Y cuando digo que lo amo, entiendo que él es el escritor y otros son sus protagonistas, pero en ese libro, que no es ficción, pues él es ambos. Y así como amé su escritura, también me dio mucha compasión su persona. Es a lo que se arriesga él contando lo que cuenta como lo cuenta.
Bueno, luego leí el del Circuito interior y otra vez, zas, un libro que me mueve y me fascina y me enfrenta a este México que amo y un poco odio.
Y luego viene este libro. Uff. ganador y finalista de importantes premios.
Lo primero que me pregunto es porqué en Goodreads tienen tan baja calificación sus libros cuando él es tan bueno. Bueno, eso me lo parece a mí.

En fin, la cosa es que este es libro como una autobiografía más, y me gusta, y me confunde a veces y de pronto dice algo sobre un libro que escribió y yo no conozco ese libro y ahí empieza la rollo que sigue.

Lo bueno de escritores generosos y accesibles como él es que responden tus dudas. Yo le escribo y le pregunto por ese libro. Me responde que no existe, le digo, pero no es esta una autobiografía?, me dice que no, que es una novela. Mm...Pero yo la entiendo como biografía. Te pegaba tu padre o no, Paco? Él me responde con algo que me fascina y que espero no le moleste que comparta, me dice: Solo le puedes ver así. Realidad novelizada. Porque necesitas imaginación para trabajar memorias. Y necesitas la libertad de ficción para descubrir lo que necesitas contar.

Ufffff. Tan cierto!!
Y tan confuso. Porque ahora con la nueva moda de los escritores por contarnos su vida, por decirnos lo mal que les fue (porque no he leído hasta ahora memorias bellas de escritores famosos, ¿las hay?) pues uno no sabe bien hasta dónde creerles, hasta dónde disfrutarles y hasta dónde sufrir con ellos. Y esa duda me acompaña durante todo esta lectura que adoro, aunque esté por terminarla aun.

Creo que Francisco ha escrito un bello libro sobre él mismo y las relaciones humanas dolorosas y amorosas de su vida, sobre la discriminación y la falta de coherencia en sus propias raíces, sobre sus vínculos fallidos y su afectada Guatemala, sobre la vida y los hermanos y los padres y el castigo y la enfermedad y las novias y el amor. Yo lo disfruto mucho, aunque insistentemente trato de identificarlo, de entenderlo, de no compadecerlo. A él. Y me gana el amor hacia su persona. No lo puedo evitar. Es un gran escritor. Y me parece un dolido ser humano. En constante búsqueda de su felicidad.

Claro que esto puede no ser cierto. Obvio. Pero es lo que saco de la lectura. Es lo que quizá, en una de esas, él mismo quiere lograr en nosotros los que lo leemos. Que nos duela hasta la médula lo que nos platica. Que le creamos. Que nos cause compasión.
Eso, si es verdad o solo una estupida idea mía, sólo él lo sabe.

Iré a verlo a su presentación la semana entrante. Me urge un abrazo
¿Le urgirá a él?

[Louise]

I gave this book a fair shot, but it just wasn't for me. I disliked the writing style, sort of a stream-of-consciousness. The main character (the book is written in the first person) is heading from New York City to Boston to visit his mother in a nursing home and to see an old female friend from high school. The narrative flow is constantly interrupted by reminiscences, so it was hard to keep track of what passed for action. The blurb interested me: son of a white, Jewish father and a Guatemalan mother, who had been bullied as a youngster. It was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction! But after almost 100 pages, I found I just didn't care to read any further. This is my book club's selection for this month, and it will be interesting to hear what the other members thought of this book!

[Scgmom4yahoo.com · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read most of Francisco Goldman's books which I was introduced to in Guatemala in the an amazing library at the Spanish Language school PLQE.org. in Xela. This book interested me on both a deeply microcosmic level of the author or main character's inner life, heartaches and conflicts, AND the macro level of our conflicted world today and the powers that be .

Thank you FG.

[Michael Flick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, witty, funny, engrossing life story of the author, half Guatemalan through his mother, half Jewish through his abusive father, passing effortlessly from the present to the most remote past, always with the upmost candor.

[Jim Beatty · Rating 5 out of 5]

a man, in the second half of his life might become the reverse of who he was in the first. m. proust
Pulitzer finalist 2022

[Bob Baker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Pulitzer Pride finalist is a difficult read. It reminds me of reading a long article in The New Yorker, lots of digressions and jumping around in time and space. Of course, I would call James Joyce’s Ulysses a difficult read, too.

All this having been said, the book raises many important issues in the context of a real life, making clear how everything going on in life affects the development of an adult. As such it is really worth slogging through, and perhaps should be rated 4-5 stars.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wanted to give this 4.5 stars, but can't award half stars on this platform. Such a lovely, curious, emotionally and historico-socially complex book. It's so rare and beautiful to read the work of an evolved man who really gets it, not in a spiritually bypassing way. Someone who has processed his past issues and is at a good place with himself and his family and the world. I really loved it and would recommend it to anyone and everyone.

[J Davidow · Rating 5 out of 5]

masterful storytelling

Another indelebile read from Francisco Goldman, a btilliant fokkow up to his earlier Long Night if the White Chickens. he will move you with the intimacy of his tale and impress you with the lyrical beauty of his prose.

[Steven Breiter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is extremely descriptive and uses great imagery to paint pictures, but the book feels unfocused and all over the place. Hard to follow the timeline and because of that, takes you out of an interesting story.

[Carly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh my gosh?? A novel about a Guatemalan Jew raised in predominantly white spaces grappling with complicated identities and feelings of displacement?? It’s me???

[Anni Kramer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Without a doubt, this book has many humorous parts and often had me laughing. The relationships between the members of the family are in focus, most notably that between the author and his domineering, unpleasant father and his kind, likeable mother.
All to often, Goldmann rambled on about characters who had no particualar effect on the story, I forgot them almost as fast as I read them, and what he would most certainly put in his own words is "What the hell is all this crap about?"
Though the story is witty and fast-paced, I considered putting it down after the first 50 pages, but then went on reading to the end, eager to give the author a chance to say what (he might have) wanted to say. I'm still not sure.
Three stars for the prose and the author's wit. But it's not a book I enjoyed as much as I would have liked to.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think this book ever figured out what it wanted to be. The story was very scattered and seemed to touch on everything but explore nothing. Domestic abuse, dictators, bullying, sex, sibling relationship, romance, anti-Semitism , oppression, art, homosexuality, religion, immigrants, political excesses, journalism, etc. Topics only raised but not deeply explored. The narrator was also a bit whiney, making him unlikeable to me.

[Trevor Kidd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monkey Boy works is a novel that resembles memoir, an exploration of divided identity. It functions through a type of archeology, uncovering layers about the past - of the narrators mother in particular and its parallels with Guatemala through years of war. The tone is very candid. It meanders, but with purpose. I recommend it.

[Cindy Moon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not focus in this book. Some sentences last almost a whole page. It is very meandering. I enjoy some of the traveling between memory, storytelling, and the present. But it felt like there was no driving force to keep my attention.

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review of Monkey Boy on BookBrowse Journal here:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/in...

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel of a man who was born as American from a Venezuelan mother and Ukrainian father, both migrants, similar to the author’s life. The man has been a journalist in Mexico for a long time. He tries to go home to Boston to be with his mother in his last days but he has a hard time dealing with his sister who’s been the main caretaker, his past in the US and his life since.

[mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Format: audiobook
Author: Francisco Goldman ~ Title: Monkey Boy ~ Narrator: Robert Fass
Story: 4 stars ~ Narration: 4.5 stars
Complete audiobook review

Monkey boy is another one of those books, that some will like and some just won't. Genre is literary fiction and it is written in a stream-of-consciousness style. At first, it seems a bit confusing, and slow. But don't give up right away.

Main charatcter, Francisco Goldberg is sharing his memories of childhood. He remembers his upbringing in a half-Guatemalan and half-Jewish family and shares his thoughts about his relationship with his mother and abusive father.

Although I love literary fiction, and I enjoy reading this particular genre in a book format, I think, in this case, the audiobook was better for me.

The narration was great, although at first, it may seem a bit monotonous. But it's not. It suits the type of narration in this book. The narrator distinguishes different voices of other people - women and that of his father. This audiobook will be appreciated especially by literary fiction fans.

Thanks to the publisher Tantor Audio for the opportunity to listen to this! All opinions are my own.

[Mla08080 · Rating 4 out of 5]

During a five-day visit to his hometown of Boston, a writer attempts to fit together the pieces of his own past, his mother's, and that of her native Guatemala."
Nice quick summary of this Pulitzer Prize finalist by Francisco Goldberg, whose narrator in this very autobiographical novel is Frank Goldberg .
Frank is returning to Boston to see his mother and possibly his sister, but the five day trip will connect him to all his memories of a childhood filled with parental beatings and school bullies. It also recalls the loves of his life and hints at the possibility of a new relationship.
Time is pretty fluid in the narrative as Frank uses a simple skipped line to change from current time to his journalistic career in South America, where his expose of the governmental murder of a bishop ( true story) has prompted his to escape from retaliation. Incidents from history, like the CIA's overthrow of the Guatemalan government to the benefit of the American banana company, make for some fascinating reading, as do Goldberg's natural storytelling abilities. "He was plunging into what was fast becoming one of the era’s darkest proxy wars, a horrific conflict that was first sparked in the 1950s by the United States’ covert removal of Guatemala’s left-wing president, Jacobo Árbenz, and that over the ensuing decades claimed the lives of 200,000 people, displaced a million more, and unleashed the guns and gangs that rule the country now.(New York review)"
I'm glad I picked up this novel-It's not quite Juno Diaz, but comparable. I would recommend this and will look to explore some of his other works.

Lines
It was all so different with Gisela, who possessed what Mexicans call morbo, a moody sultriness like human opium.

I’m mesmerized by the extraordinary hues and texture of Lulú’s hair, a dark rich buffalo-pelt brown with faint coppery shadings, a whirly wild complexity like a Jackson Pollock painting but one in only those colors.

Proust wrote in his novel that a man, during the second half of his life, might become the reverse of who he was in the first.

my father shoving me down onto the floor with hand clamped around the back of my neck, my mother chirping: Bert! Bert! Not in the head! Don’t hit him in the head! It happened so often, all the different times blend into one long memory like the loud blur of a fast train passing on the opposite track.

I met Gisela at a party within days of having moved to Mexico City. A love-at-first-sight thing, like I’d been torn open, gutted, and refilled with pure yearning I could hardly bear.Her Picasso harlequin girl expressiveness, the straight line between her lips that when bent downwards at the corners and pulling her face down with it could make her look so tragic and so childishly gleeful when stretched out, deepening her dimples. Her jittery overcaffeinated Audrey Hepburn lissomness and poise. Her rich-girl-gone-wrong haughty moodiness.

Father Doyle was baroquely bulky, with a ruler-straight part in his thin brown hair, narrow eyes that looked scribbled in with a pencil, a long sloping nose, lips like jelly candy.

That was one historically literate cop, though, to make that connection between my mother’s country and the originally Boston-based fruit company that gave birth to Chiquita and helped bring years of military dictatorship and slaughter to her country.

As I watched her leaning over my cast, listening to the squeak of her marker against the plaster, a warmth went through me like a wave, one that carried me all the way to that locked room where emotions are stored like bicycles that have never been ridden.

the maw of his navel hanging out over his belt like a screaming Edvard Munch face.

She’s a hydra of explosive nerves; the key to being with her is learning how to avoid lighting those fuses.

Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo and their search for the children of their own disappeared sons and daughters. Most of those young mothers were already pregnant when they were abducted; some were impregnated in the Argentine military’s clandestine prisons, mostly by jailors and torturers who raped them. Born in the secret birthing wards of military hospitals, weaned after a few days from mothers who would soon be put aboard death flights, those stolen infants were almost never, as they grew up, told the truth about their origins by their adoptive parents. So far, nearly a hundred of those offspring have been found and united with their grandmothers.

[Jales · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Eric Hollen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stopped reading with 100 pages left. Honestly, this might be more my fault than the novel. I liked it while I was reading it, but got caught up on real life things, and I really just don’t have any appetite to dive back into it. There’s some beautiful, evocative passages of childhood, and some great scenes. But it just really didn’t have the narrative momentum that would make me want to dive back in. Part of this has to do with how much meandering it does on the past. Maybe I’ll recheck it out someday.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty but boring. This book already exists in the form of Shuggie Bain or any number or coming of age out of place stories.

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very complicated and complex story about a man and his relationships across time with his family members and other people that were important (or not so) influences on his life. It is sad. I wish that I had taken notes from the start which probably would have made this a much more enriching read.

[Mark Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Long Night of White Chickens was my introduction to Francisco Goldman, the author who I selected to review due to his connections to Guatemala, and I’ve been a fan ever since. Though born in Boston, his mother is a Catholic Guatemalan, his father Jewish American, so his life started off with an intriguing combination of influences. The book is a tense, almost surrealistic detective story that opens windows on the Latin American reality of State Sponsored assassinations, marabunta youth gangs and organized crime.

His next book, Say Her Name, is an evocative story of love and loss between the author and the woman he fell in love with and married, writer Aura Estrada. Tragically, a month before their second wedding anniversary, Aura breaks her neck body surfing. To deal with the loss and deep-seated feelings of guilt, Goldman chronicles his unspeakable loss, and the stages of grief when love and passion give way to inexplicable pain.

The author recalls memories from their university days in Mexico City, her studies at Columbia University, their early years together in New York City, and the exhilaration of youthful travels in Mexico and Europe. Humor and humility lighten the pain of the author’s overwhelming loss.

Covering the wars in Central America in the 1980s for Harper’s magazine led Goldman to write The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?, an extraordinary piece of investigative journalism that examines the assassination of Guatemalan Catholic Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi Conedera by the Guatemalan military.

Bishop Gerardi, Guatemala’s leading human rights activist, was bludgeoned to death in the parish garage, which is only a few hundred feet from the government’s most sophisticated security units and surveillance apparatus. The murder took place just two days after a groundbreaking church-sponsored report was released that implicated the military in the murders and disappearances of some 200,000 civilians. Under continuous threats and intimidation, Goldman doggedly tracks down and interviews witnesses that no other reporter or authority is able to access and reports first-hand some of the crucial developments in the case unfolding before him. The book was recently made into an HBO documentary in which Goldman, dramatically, adds critical context drawn from the months he spent investigating the murder.

This book is especially interesting because I’ve been working on a documentary that will explore the causes for the current migrant crisis: why so many Indigenous are fleeing Guatemala. Our documentary, Trouble in the Highlands, covers many of the same issues that Goldman covered, including political corruption, military crimes, and the human rights abuses that Bishop Gerardi’s report exposed.

We are pleased that Francisco Goldman has expressed interest in being interviewed for our documentary. In addition to Goldman, we recently added new team members and updated the website; see: https://www.troubleinthehighlands.com/

Naturally, as soon as I learned that Goldman has a new book out that is largely “autobiographical”, I ordered Monkey Boy. I was especially interested in its designation as a “novel” rather than autobiography (as reviewers have pointed out). In a revealing interview with Rachel Kushner for LitHub, he explains the importance of changing the surname of his lead character:

So, yeah, that “-man” to “-berg” makes a big difference. It’s a first decisive step into fiction, into turning myself into a character that‘s going to move and act and think within a fiction. It’s freeing myself from “myself,” from any duty to be faithful to the “known facts,” as I might be if I were writing an autobiography, even if many of the components I may be giving to “Frankie Goldberg” are, in fact, drawn from my own life.

Walking the fine line between literary fiction and autobiography gives the author flexibility to fill in the gaps with fictional material that enhances the story.

In the interview, he explains the key role that several women play in the story—his former Mexican wife, Aura, his mother, sister and grandmother:

There’s also my Guatemalan grandmother, Abuelita, definitely a strong and eccentric woman who I adored, and the women she sent up to Boston to help my mother with housework and looking after us so that she could go to college, eventually becoming a college Spanish professor.

In the novel, Frankie Goldberg visits two of those women.

As an adolescent, I had a talent for turning unrequited loves into friendships. Later my friendships with women didn’t require such painful beginnings. All my adult life, I’ve had strong male friendships, too, in the U.S., in Mexico and Central America. But in the U.S., most of my closest friends are women. I guess I just enjoy their conversation and sense of humor and way of being in the world more, and I think I also relate to them more.

Jewish Italian writer, Natalia Ginzburg, helped the author learn one important, revealing lesson on coming from a diverse, cultural background, “…how artificial the racial and ethnic categories we’re boxed into are, and that there’s no such things as being “half and half” anything, that we’re only fully what and who we are…”

The author reveals some interesting connections between his family and their friends to some important times in Guatemala’s history and shows how he can speculate what might have been by edging his commentary into the realm of fiction:

Did the United Fruit bilingual secretary, Lolita Ojito, ever filch a note or diary page in which Freud’s nephew had scribbled something like “If this is gonna work, boys, we gotta get the archbishop on board, and pronto” and bring it to her best friend in Our Lady’s Guild House, so that she could give it to the consul, who would pass it directly to President Arbenz, maybe in time to save the day? Doesn’t seem so. At any rate, the day was never saved. Questioning Mamita (the author’s mother) about the coup had turned out to be futile. If only I’d thought to ask her about it years ago. If only.

The speculation is even more compelling when the author reveals that his mother knows the ambassador, Cabot Lodge, and the upper crust Bostonian “Brahamins” who are employed by United Fruit Company. The author goes on to reveal the origins of his nickname in life, “Monkey Boy,” as well as behind the scenes details of the key witness, which leads to the conviction of at least some military personnel responsible for killing the Bishop.

This book is powerful on so many levels and provides additional insights into the author’s previous works. As Publishers Weekly correctly points out, “Captivating…Goldman’s direct, intimate writing alone is worth the price of admission.” And Kirkus’s starred review states, “The warmth and humanity of Goldman’s storytelling are impossible to resist.”