Year of the Monkey

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Riveting, elegant, humorousthis "picaresque voyage through Patti Smiths dreams and life, blending fiction and reality, conjured characters and actual ones (The New York Times) is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times. Illustrated by Smiths signature Polaroids. Following a run of new years concerts at San Franciscos 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 Smithinveterately curious, always exploring, always writingthis becomes a year of reckoning with the changes in lifes 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, its the Year of the Monkey. But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world. Including a new chapter, "Epilogue of an Epilogue," and ten new photos, Year of the Monkey reminds us that despair and possibility often spring from the same source (Los Angeles Times).