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Fourteen-year-old Pookie never did like Audrey much.
They were only friends because Pookie’s bad teeth and
Audrey’s braininess meant that nobody else would play with
them. Eventually, they just had one another, their
friendship sealed over baptism in front of God and old
ladies who “got happy.”
At 14 years old, Audrey liked to read. She also liked to sit
on her porch swing on Queen Street and watch Pookie’s daddy
come home every night. Three years before, Audrey’s father
went to Korea and never came back. She sometimes pretended
that Sonnyboy was really her daddy.
Or, she did - until Sonnyboy murdered Pookie’s Mama.
And that right there, it changed a lot of things.
Pookie started using her given name – Caroline – and she
started messing with boys. She’d always said she was going
to Hollywood and Audrey believed her. The funny thing was
that Audrey was the first to leave Mt. Sterling, when
a man heard her playing piano for a funeral and offered her
a job in Harlem.
Leaving her Mama and Grandpap was hard, but Harlem was a
dream come true for Audrey. She missed Caroline, too, but
they’d had disagreements before she left, and Audrey was
sure the friendship was too damaged to continue.
Still, Audrey wrote letters back home, telling Caroline
about life in New York, meeting a special man, fame and
about Harlem through the eyes of a country girl. But to
Caroline, it all seemed to be bragging. She always knew that
Audrey thought she was better than everybody else.
What did she ever see in that girl, anyhow?
Reading Saint Monkey is as painful and irresistible
as the friendship that forms this novels’ core.
Written in two distinct voices, this is the story of a
love-hate relationship between two friends who grow together
and grow apart but can’t seem to let go of either. It’s the
story of moving on, while aching for your roots, and of
treading water while wondering what’s beyond the boundaries
of your town.
And for those reasons, sticking with the theme of this
novel, it’s easy to both love and hate author Jacinda
Townsend’s utterly compelling characters: Audrey, for her
preoccupied properness, and Caroline for hiding her hurt
behind sarcastic sass.
This is not a whip-through-it-quick novel. No, this one
demands that you sink into the pages and take some time.
And if you’ve got that, then Saint Monkey is surely a
book to curl up with. |
