Mister Monkey (Prose) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Expertly constructed, Mister Monkey is so fresh and new it’s almost giddy, almost impudent with originality. Tender and artful, Prose’s 15th novel is a sophisticated satire, a gently spiritual celebration of life, a dark and thoroughly grim depiction of despair, a screwball comedy, a screwball tragedy.... It’s gorgeous and bright and fun and multi-faceted, carrying within it the geological force of the ages. It’s a book to be treasured. It’s that good. It’s that funny. It’s that sad. It’s that deceptive and deep.
Cathleen Schine - New York Times Book Review (front cover review)


Everybody involved in the show loathes it and with good reason. It sounds dreadful.... Prose has plenty of fun mocking her invented disaster, but her real interest is the web of people connected by Mister Monkey.... Like some earlier storyteller, Prose suggests that "all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players." In a sense, we’re all cast in what she calls "the collective nightmare of Mister Monkey," condemned to play out this ghastly farce of material existence. Masterful....a lovely tribute to the transformative value of imagination.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


[A] comic novel vastly more entertaining than the sad production of the children’s musical, Mister Monkey, she so hilariously pillories.... Juggling multiple points of view, she presents an indelible cast of characters.... Some are reliable narrators, some self-deluding, but all intersect in surprising and remarkable ways..… In this strong, humane, and funny novel, Prose has treated us to an enthralling entertainment both on and off stage.
Boston Globe


Beautifully crafted, incisively written…Engaging and accessible…What elevates this novel is Prose’s ability to let us see into the heart of each character, to render each so vulnerably human, so achingly real in just a few short paragraphs.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


Mister Monkey' Channels Disappointment.... [A] dark comedy about the mainly sad, disappointing lives of everyone involved in a woeful way-off-Broadway revival.... What's remarkable is how much wit and pathos Prose manages to wring from this wildly unpromising jumping-off point.... That said, I can't pretend that I was as taken with all the monkey business.... [Still, Prose] shares...her considerable talent for ventriloquy: She is the Meryl Streep of literary fiction.
Heller McAlpin - NPR


As absorbing and three-dimensional as each character is, the development of the actual novel feels awkwardly formulaic, and the strangeness of the play itself...s stilted, despite the genuine intrigue of each scene in the novel.
Publishers Weekly


The Off-Off Broadway children's musical Mister Monkey has been running too long, as Margot, who plays the chimp's lawyer, surely knows. Witty mayhem ensues when she receives a letter from a secret admirer....
Library Journal


(Starred review.) With her customary sure hand....Prose hilariously nails the down-at-the-heels milieu.... Wickedly funny and sharply observant, in the author’s vintage manner, with a warmth that softens the satire just enough.
Kirkus Reviews