Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
2022 American Book Award Winner
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, Boston Globe, Kirkus Reviews, AND Washington Independent Review of Books
A New York Times New and Noteworthy Book
Longlisted for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
"An autofictional inquiry into the protean nature of identity, written with disarming candor and grace, blending memory and imagination to transformational effect." —2022 Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury
“An enrapturing novel, a Proustian trip through one man’s life and memory, as well as the violent history of colonization that binds the Americas…Goldberg’s most finely observed subject is himself, rendered with empathy and skepticism, intimacy and distance, tenderness and resignation.” — Viet Thanh Nguyen, American Book Award Citation
“[A] story that travels relentlessly between a difficult present and an unfinished past… In this case, bringing together the child and the seasoned adult may involve a kind of spiritual revolution, a casting off of the past by a reliving of it, a turn in the middle years toward a different way of being… he must change his life...At the heart of the novel’s own tenacity and optimism is Frankie’s mother, his mamita, Yolanda Montejo…her gaiety and crooked, defiant spirit... Monkey Boy steadily becomes a moving and tender elegy for a woman who seems to have spent most of her life suspended warily between visceral love of her birthplace and learned gratitude for her adopted home.” —James Wood, New Yorker
“Brilliantly constructed auto-fiction … Goldman writes with humor and honesty as he unpacks some of America’s senseless racial politics and deconstructs one family’s volatile, cross cultural history. The result is a family portrait that is funny, loving and fierce, all at the same time.”—Martha Anne Toll, NPR
“A book about, and also by, a writer journeying across space but also back in time, at least in his mind, to the places that made him… [A] painful, refractive, beautiful book.” — Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, New York Review of Books
“Francisco Goldman’s new novel, Monkey Boy… is positively boiling over with original metaphors and insights… he’s a writer of real force and originality…with rare vitality and humor… This book is about all these women, and how alive they are, but not just as presences who appear and speak for themselves. It’s also about how vivid these women are in the mind, and in the interior life, of the narrator… a connoisseur of female strength and eccentricity.” ―Rachel Kushner, Literary Hub
“Goldman is a master writer—In Monkey Boy, he leaves nothing at bay, attending to the most important questions facing our nation and the most gentle questions turning in our hearts. It is a book, like any journey across vast distances, that we cannot help but commit to imperfect, passionate memory. “—Ricardo Frasso Jaramillo, The Believer
“Goldman’s voice and storytelling powers have never been more insinuating or powerful.”— Kirkus Editor-in-Chief Tom Beer’s Ten Favorite Reads of 2021
“Reading this book is like reading a family saga, a memoir and a novel while listening to an old friend telling stories about his life. . . the seriousness of these topics is counterbalanced by Goldman’s knack for beautiful language, straightforward prose and sense of humor. . . And it’s all carried by Goldman’s distinct style. His words will linger in the minds and hearts of readers long after they’ve turned the last page.”—Gabino Iglesias, San Francisco Chronicle
“By taking us along with him, drawing us so deftly into moments of intimacy and worldliness, brutality and beauty, the author effectively ceases to be an outsider. In Monkey Boy he has crafted his own E pluribus unum, with room enough for stories lived, written or read — and, of course, for the two Franciscos, Goldberg and Goldman.”—Ellen Akins, Washington Post
“Goldman’s narrative suggests that America has never been one thing or another, but rather a constantly shifting constellation of socially constructed affiliations, stitched together in memory and experience ... Goldberg is an extremely fluid, knowing narrator.”—Ed Morales, The Nation
“An enrapturing novel…Filtered through a deeply personal and idiosyncratic narrative that is beguiling in its voice. That voice, or those voices, of Goldman the author and Goldberg the narrator pull the reader in the way a warm bath does, until one is completely immersed up to the neck or perhaps the ears, in no way wishing to leave.” — Viet Thanh Nguyen
“From the painful intimate violence in a suburban New England home, to racial cruelty among high school teenagers, to the US government’s political and military interventionism in Latin America, Goldman’s sweeping gaze runs through multiple circuits of America’s violence, showing us how deeply connected they in fact are. With the exact balance of outrage and hope, Monkey Boy takes us on an eye-opening journey, full of tenderness and horror, through the often-ignored layers of this country’s history. A powerful, necessary book.”―Valeria Luiselli
“Like Frankie, Goldman is an author made up of many parts. Part Catholic and part Jewish, part American and part Guatemalan, he has invented in this novel a universe that allows his character and himself to explore what it means to be a whole person when so much of one’s 'self' is divided ... The travails of Frankie’s family are the novel’s greatest strength…Thanks to Francisco Goldman’s skill, we are compelled to recognize Frankie Goldberg’s melancholy and allow it to wash over us.”—Chris Rutledge, Washington Independent Review of Books
“Masterful… For Goldman… the autobiographical novel isn’t the last puff of a dying genre but a form through which to consider the competing moral and aesthetic demands of the real and the imagined… Monkey Boy is a fascinating hybrid… tightly, almost symmetrically structured, concerned from beginning to end with the possibility, and transformative power, of love… Monkey Boy doesn’t jettison fiction for nonfiction, the artificial for the real, but considers the truths of both. The novel is dead; long live the novel.”―Anthony Domestico, Commonweal
“Francisco Goldman, one of our most brilliant political writers, is also, miraculously, a Chekhov of the heart. This novel is wild, funny, and wrenching, as well as a profound act of retrieval and transformation.” ―Rivka Galchen
“Here the author of the achingly beautiful Say Her Name takes center-stage in an enthralling autofiction. . . A tour de force reminiscent of Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise.”―O Magazine
“Irresistible. . . Convincing intimacy illuminates Monkey Boy, which, despite exposing historical, generational, familial denial and horror, ultimately proves to be a beguiling, surprisingly droll portrait of an unsettled middle-aged man (still) searching for love and (self-)acceptance.” ―Shelf Awareness
“Goldman fuses autobiography and invention to create fiction of nearly nuclear intensity…This is a journalist’s notebook and an artist’s sketchbook―every detail vivid and meaningful, every captivating character a portal into the struggle for freedom and dignity. Although steeped in trauma and loneliness, prejudice and brutality, secrets and lies, Goldman’s ravishing, multidirectional novel is also iridescent with tenderness, comedic absurdity, sensual infatuation, reclaimed love, the life-sustaining desire to “remember every single second,” and the redemption of getting every element just right.”―Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
“The warmth and humanity of Goldman's storytelling are impossible to resist.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Captivating. . . Goldman’s direct, intimate writing alone is worth the price of admission.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Francisco Goldman . . . Francisco Goldberg? . . . Frankie Gee!―crafter of the tenderest dirtiest love scenes!―the wisest and spookiest children!―the fathers whose monstrosity breaks our hearts with compassion for them―who else can do all this? Francisco Goldman is uncategorizable, as is this book which made me grow a second heart just to contain all its fierce tenderness. Goldman has been my literary hero from his first entrancing Long Night of White Chickens to this latest take-no-prisoners Monkey Boy. He is a true original, that rarest of writers, the kind we cannot live without.” ―Susan Choi
“Monkey Boy is written with tenderness and emotional precision. It tells what it means to be an American, to have an identity that is nourished by many sources, including ones that are mysterious and shrouded in secrecy. It is a story of two cities―Boston and Guatemala―and an account of a man’s relationship with his mother, who is evoked here in sharp and loving detail. It is a book about how we piece the past together. Goldman bridges the gap between imagination and memory with stunning lyricism and unsparing clarity.” ―Colm Tóibín
“Monkey Boy is a moving story on what it means to Jewish and Catholic, what it means to have immigrant parents from vastly different parts of the world, and how a Guatemalan Jewish kid in a white Boston suburb finds his way in the world. ―ALMA
