New World Monkeys

This strong debut is a convincing portrait of a messed-up marriage that reminded me at times of A.M. Homes's MUSIC FOR TORCHING.

While the protagonists (Duncan and Lilly) aren't exactly sympathetic, the reader feels drawn into their predicament: each of them slowly going off the deep end as their lives -together and apart- go off the rails. Nancy Mauro overcomes a few first-novel stumbles with smart prose, strong supporting characters, and some nice absurdist touches (a dead boar, a skeleton in the garden, crazy townfolk) that add interesting conflict and a little dark humor.

Can't wait for the next one!

New World Monkeys, a first novel by advertising creative director Nancy Mauro, begins with a promising set-up. New York City denizens Duncan and Lily, drifting apart after five years of marriage, decide to strain what remains of their matrimonial bond by spending their summer work weeks apart and weekends together in a recently-inherented farm house in a small upstate town called Osterhagen. Trouble barrels toward them on page one, when their car crushes a wild boar that serves as this strange town's mascot. The summer is spent reacting to the boar incident, coming to the realization that their respective careers (he's an ad man, she's a PhD candidate) are wholly unfulfilling and trying to decide whether their frigid marriage is worth show more saving, all the while making decisions whose sole purpose seems to be to alienate the locals.

To compensate for the mundane plot, Mauro juices things up with a family skeleton buried in the back yard, an absurdly tasteless ad campaign for jeans using hot women to play the part of U.S. troops and the Viet Cong, and an inexplicable friendship between Lily and a perverted Peeping Tom who's passing through town.

The prose is well above average, and I like the way in which Mauro uses the rural setting to expose the dead branch of the evolutionary tree to which these city-dwelling new world monkeys cling. But the characters' words and actions don't ring true to me, giving the story an absurd feel that seems out of place with its serious intent. Maybe this is why I ended up caring far too little about whether digging in the dirt will allow Duncan and Lily to unearth and reassemble the pieces of their broken marriage. show less

"All of these things, accidents. But the thing that's come at them tonight came with true criminal intent. Against his father's time-honored advice Duncan had swerved and tried to take most of the blow on the driver's side. Later, when Lily is clucking at the Saab, its hood crushed like a boxer's nose, he'll insist they were lucky. It was trying to grease all three of us, he'll say." - From New World Monkeys

I first heard of New World Monkeys in the September/October edition of Writer's Digest magazine. I was so captivated by the short paragraph describing this book by Nancy Mauro (the More Notable Debuts section), that I wrote her personally (something I had never done in all my years reviewing!), asking if she could forward my review show more copy request to her publicist.

She was very gracious, as was the publicist, and I was eager to devour the book when it arrived less than a week later.

I am not exaggerating when I say this is one of the most brilliant novels I've ever read, perhaps THE most brilliant. I stand in awe of Mauro as a writer; her wicked wit, penetrating observations, eccentric characters, and bang-on portrayal of humans devolving (talk about turning "character arc" on its head!) are absorbing, disturbing, twisted, and--at times--laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Resounding with the symbolic recurrence of hirsute themes (representing the beastly nature within humanity?), New World Monkeys is about a city couple accidentally killing a small-town mascot (a wild boar), the repercussions of the death blow (executed not by the advertising husband, but by his Ph.D. architectual candidate wife), their subsequent finding of human bones in the garden (RIP Tinker), their together-yet-alone relationship--and so much more.

Duncan and Lily are, in effect, perched "above it all"--playing it safe, surveying their surroundings, probably feeling superior to anyone and everyone. But when they literally "get in the dirt" while excavating Tinker's bones--a new evolution happens.

Lily befriends an erudite Peeping Pervert (and goes on some deviant look-sees with him), Duncan cooks up an oh-so-un-PC ad campaign for jeans using the Vietnam War as a backdrop, and a cast of peculiar characters intersect their lives in Osterhagen.

I enjoyed this book SO MUCH and can't recommend it highly enough. I rarely read books more than once, but I'm itching to re-read it already because of Mauro's masterful, poetic prose. (Speaking of Prose, Nancy Mauro, indeed, reminds me of Francine Prose. My husband, who I admonished MUST read this book--and he is now, and loving it!--made this same observation to me on his own.)

If you want to discover an amazing new author, enjoy gorgeous word contortions, and love quirky (but well-written) literary fiction , you MUST get New World Monkeys!

-- Janet Boyer, author of Back in Time Tarot show less

Duncan and Lily arrive in Osterhagen, New York to take a break from their lives in the city. Before they can even settle into Lily's inherited old house, they kill the town mascot, a wild boar called The Sovereign of the Deep Wood. This encounter with the boar sets the stage for the following interactions between husband and wife. Once deeply in love, this couple find themselves at a crossroads in their marriage. Neither of them knows quite where to go with their relationship, that much they do realize yet leave unexpressed. What they soon discover is that neither knows where to go individually either.

Lily spends much of her time at the library supposedly working on her Ph.D. but mostly befriending the town pervert. Duncan treks back to show more the city after the weekends to spend his week working for an advertising agency. The two find a bit of solace when they are together upon finding a body buried in the backyard. The body turns out to be Tinker, Lily's grandfather's nanny who, as the family legend goes, kidnapped the little boy (later discovered in the barn) and was never heard from again. They vow to dig it out together as they ponder the possible circumstances of her demise.

There are a few other background stories poking around in the book but none jostle for attention. Each little story has a role to play and provides a way to get a clearer understanding of the couple. These two are oblivious to what the other thinks and feels, and half the time they are equally oblivious of and perplexed by their own thoughts and feelings.

The inner dialogues of these characters are striking, at times insightful and at other times completely ignorant. Mauro sets them up and knocks them down over and over again. Just when Lily or Duncan thinks they have finally gotten something figured out, they become painfully aware of just how much they still do not grasp. As feelings of powerlessness, alienation, and confused exasperation come to the surface, husband and wife contemplate the potentiality that they are the one worth leaving. show less

Nancy Mauro's debut novel, New World Monkeys, is a very clever work of postmodern literature. Mauro writes sharp, sardonic, intelligent prose designed for smart, educated readers. It is not a masterpiece—in fact, there is much that distracted me and pulled me away from the work—but altogether, it's an outstanding debut.

The novel has four things going for it: a bizarre, cinematic, multilayered plot; an oddball set of true-to-life characters; fresh, arresting, postmodern writing; and a cynical 21st-century cultural theme. The writing is full of vivid, quirky metaphors that make you smile, laugh out loud, or simply pause in awe. But, be forewarned: the writing also demands exceptional close attention to detail. I found myself show more frequently having to jump back many pages to some odd detail at the end of a section in order to understand another odd detail in the beginning of the new section on that same story line. But putting the two together to figure out the meaning was, in itself, a nice reward. It felt like the author was purposely planting tiny prose puzzles throughout the work just to give smart readers frequent stimulating doses of psychic rewards.

What did I like best—the plot, the characters, the writing, or the theme? All were excellent, but I loved the oddball cast of believable characters best. With this work, I got a chance to visit in a strange new world...and, it was a world so different from my own, that I felt like I'd suddenly dropped down a rabbit hole into another dimension. For me, that's what good fiction is all about! This novel felt like a creative tour-de-force.

New Work Monkeys is not for everyone. Unfortunately, I can't imagine it succeeding as bestselling work of popular fiction—the writing is just too smart and demanding for that. However, the plot is outlandish, fun, and very contemporary. I can easily imagine it being reworked by a brilliant Hollywood screenwriter into a moneymaking film. The success of the movie would hinge on getting first-rate actors to play the oddball characters...and that is what Nancy Mauro has created here with this novel, a marvelous cast of characters.

As an aside, check out the author's Web page for this work. It is first-rate and exceptionally creative. And, don't miss viewing the videos—you'll find the author acting as her main character; it's well done and intriguing—a new type of literary marketing for a postmodern world. Bravo, Nancy Mauro! show less

At it's best this book merits five stars. The opening scene -- in which the husband runs over a feral hog and the wife finishes him off -- is a masterpiece of psychologically insightful black comedy. And the advertising campaign developed over the course of the book for a company that makes both flared and straight blue jeans tops anything Mad Men has come up with. Overall, the book is highly original, funny, and psychologically insightful as it diagnoses a marriage that is falling apart and then comes back together. That said, it is also somewhat repetitive at points and aimless the second half is at times aimless. But I'm very much looking forward to Nancy Mauro's second novel.

At it's best this book merits five stars. The opening scene -- in which the husband runs over a feral hog and the wife finishes him off -- is a masterpiece of psychologically insightful black comedy. And the advertising campaign developed over the course of the book for a company that makes both flared and straight blue jeans tops anything Mad Men has come up with. Overall, the book is highly original, funny, and psychologically insightful as it diagnoses a marriage that is falling apart and then comes back together. That said, it is also somewhat repetitive at points and aimless the second half is at times aimless. But I'm very much looking forward to Nancy Mauro's second novel.