The Love Song of Monkey [Paperback]

[Note: Nearly a hundred of my fiction reviews by great literary artists and others not so well known are now available in my book, "Novels and other Fictions." Get it at Amazon.]

This is a fantastic novel, and I mean that in the old-fashioned sense that the events are fantastic. And surreal and deeply human. I read it in one fell swoop. It runs. Fast. It's a little crazy and you can feel Graziano making it up as he goes along--which is a great way to write a novel since you don't know how it's going to end. If you're clever and naturally creative--as Graziano is--some beautiful effects can be achieved. I once wrote a novel this way. You start out at one place: here Graziano, who is a professor of psychology at Princeton, starts with his protagonist dying of complications from AIDS. He is being taken to the hospital by his anorexic wife. He's in a lot of pain and scarcely cares whether he lives or dies. And then you end up in another: at the bottom of the ocean, in a museum, as a cat burglar called the Monkey man, and all the while you sing "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot.

I suspect that where Graziano thought he was going in the beginning is different from where he actually went. I also suspect that he had intended a realistic narrative but found himself constrained. And so he threw off the shackles and typed a tale incredible.

Graziano's strength is first in the rapid paced narrative and then in the great freedom he gives his story. Neither conventional reality nor scientific plausibility deters him from his fancy. The narrative is lean like something from James M. Cain or Cormac McCarthy, but without the strict adherence to realism. Graziano's story doesn't unfold as in a familiar tale or in something contrived to seduce the human psyche. Instead the story evolves as something reacting to myth or to the dream time, or to whim or fancy. Taken in retrospect "The Love Song of Monkey" (really a long short story), seems to be about the human predicament, as all literature must be. A man has done something wrong and is paying the price. He suffers and he learns from his suffering. And then he triumphs over circumstance and becomes something more than just human--a kind of demigod perhaps. Once he was vulnerable, then he was almost untouchable. Almost. Love kept him tethered to the world no matter how far he roamed in the great depths of the sea of his mind. And then he returned by happenstance to the world of humans and sought out the object of his love--the object of all the years of meditation--and found her more beautiful than she had ever been. And his love for her was unsullied and undiluted by the mundane events of this world. A kind of eternal and ethereal love is what Graziano's muse longs for and is what he achieves in the end.

People hurt one another and do bad things to one another, but in the end they forgive, and indeed find in their wisdom that there was really nothing to forgive ever, and in that state of mind they realize their love. And they live happily ever after, or they die in the state and in the grace of love--which amounts to the same thing.

Thus this is a love story, a bit creepy like a Halloween flick or something from a tale about the undead. As I intimated above, I read it in less than an hour. It is, all told, a strange page-turner, and one that resonates.

THE LOVE SONG OF MONKEY is a wonderful, thought-provoking read. It doesn't fall into my normal realm of books that I would read, but it leaves me with lasting thoughts and makes me think about relationships in my own life. I find myself continuing to reflect on the ideas presented days after finishing it. THE LOVE SONG OF MONKEY pulled me in and I just couldn't put it down. I kept wanting to know just how Michael Graziano would wrap it up and put it all together. I wondered how the title fit with the book, and voila! MG does just that in a surprising twist in the book. This book is magical with elements of science fiction but through it all, you will find yourself laughing at times, wanting to cry at times, and looking into yourself for how you relate to others and where things will go in your own life. I felt like I was right there, experiencing the events right along with the main character in the book... even to feeling claustrophobic during the kwark-king experience (wondering what that is? You'll need to read the book!) Michael Graziano is an amazing author and pulls off a great read. I hope he continues to write for years to come.

Twentyish Jonathan is dying from AIDS. He has given up on life, but heeds his wife Kitty's pleading to try one last desperate gambit. He agrees to see Dr. Kack inventor of the top secret Kwark King cure to see if his life can be saved.

Dr. Kack admits his device is still experimental as the intense pain on human subjects has led them to give up and the tests on animals have all ended in their death. Jonathan is willing to try and becomes the first subject to make it through all the stages of the radical molecular modification that makes his body "unbreakable" in accordance with Kack. However, he never fully comes awake and acts like he is some sort of living dead. As such Kack and Kitty dump his semi comatose body into the ocean where Jonathan's love for Kitty sustains him while he begins the trek back to human civilianization starting with his soul.

Mindful of Spielberg's A.I., this is a fascinating dreamlike character study that insists the power of love enable people to do extraordinary deeds; as Jonathan did. His goal throughout is to return to his beloved Kitty that sustains him through the medical procedure and his incredible travel to the beyond and back. A whimsical parable that focuses on the strengths and weakens of humanity with the message of "To err is human; to forgive is divine." by Alexander Pope running throughout the deep story line.

Harriet Klausner

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