Literature in a game of tag

Francine Prose's Mister Monkey reads like a game of tag, one character carrying one chapter, then tapping another character on the shoulder to take over the story until tagging the next. One might be tempted to call this a collection of related short stories except that there really is one story here, even though, as with most novels, there are a number of subplots. In this case, the subplots are sequential. Add them up and you get the plot.

I know this sounds like a major league bore, yet somehow Prose pulls it off. Each of the 11 chapters proves absorbing, as does the novel as a whole.

A popular, if overrated, children's book called Mister Monkey has been adapted for a stage musical, now being presented off -Broadway. Tickets sell well, mostly on the reputation of the book, but a little boy in the audience in the opening chapter seems to speak for everyone, cast included, when he says loud enough for everyone in the theater to hear: "Grandpa, are you interested in this?"

Rather than turn this into comedy, which would have been too easy, Prose turns it into serious literature, making numerous references throughout her novel to the likes of Anton Chekhov, J.D. Salinger and Leo Tolstoy. The passages she mentions speak of failure, sacrifice, devotion and grace, themes that echo through her own story. The author of the children's book had meant it to atone for his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam, yet somehow through changes made by his publisher and then the theater adaptation, all that has been lost. Actors see their careers going nowhere. A grandfather's love for his grandson now seems the only thing giving his life purpose. A waiter who gets free tickets as tips actually loves seeing the play. The director secretly loves an actress, as does the boy playing the monkey and that waiter. A nurse who moonlights on stage plays the villain in the play but off-stage plays the hero.

Most of us can remember how much fun we once had playing tag. Francine Prose shows us how much fun tag can be even while sitting in our easy chair with a book in our hands.