Monkey Boy

Francisco Goldberg, an American writer, has fled Mexico for New York after his reporting brought a threat against him, five years after a relationship ended badly, and may be falling for a young Mexican woman he met in Brooklyn. A high-school girlfriend draws him back to the mostly white, working-class Boston suburb of his youth. Over five days he also visits his Guatemalan mother, Yolanda, in her nursing home, playing Scrabble and coaxing out stories of her family, her marriage and old admirers as her memory comes and goes. Old scenes crowd in: his late father, Bert, a Ukrainian immigrant who was violent yet sometimes endearing; the Guatemalan women who helped bring him up; the classmates who mocked him with the book's title. The novel explores growing up half Jewish and half Catholic, half American and half Guatemalan.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Autofiction, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States

First published

2021

Author's age

67 when first published

ISBN

9780802157676 (Grove Press, United States)

9780802157683 (Grove Press, United States)

9781611854428 (Grove Press UK, United Kingdom)