However, this book has a "what in the hell, why would you ever do that" ending for one of its main characters that weakened the whole thing for me.įor the curious: Audrey and Caroline are best friends growing up, but they're also kind of nasty to each other and competitive. I fell in love with Townsend's rendering of friendships between damaged girls, down on its luck Appalachia, and 1950's jazz age, Apollo Theater Harlem (and the impermanence of attraction that comes along with that scene). Marrying musical prose with lyric vernacular, Saint Monkey delivers a stirring portrait of American storytelling and marks the appearance of an auspicious new voice in literary fiction. Jacinda Townsend’s remarkable first novel is a coming-of-age story made at once gripping and poignant by the wild energy of the Jazz Era and the stark realities of segregation.
Meanwhile, Caroline sinks into the quiet anguish of a Black woman in a backwards country, where her ambitions and desires only slip further out of reach. But fortunes can turn fast in the city-young talent means tough competition, and for Audrey failure is always one step away. Audrey flirts with love and takes the stage at the Apollo, with its fast-dancing crowds and blinding lights. And in New York City the music never stops. That is, until chance intervenes and a booking agent offers Audrey a ticket to join the booming jazz scene in Harlem-an offer she can’t resist, not even for Caroline. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County. Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she’ll never get out of Kentucky-but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles.
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