Love Monkey: A Novel

By Kyle Smith

Many men aim high; Tom Farrell dares to be average. While his friends accumulate wedding rings, mortgages, and even, alarmingly, babies, Tom still lives alone in his rented apartment with nothing but condiments and alcohol in his refrigerator. He spends Saturday mornings watching cartoons and eating Cocoa Puffs out of an Empire Strikes Back bowl, and devotes the rest of the weekend to his other favorite hobbies: sports and girls. His credo, to think and act like a thirteen-year-old boy at all times, has worked well enough to land him a decent job writing headlines for the New York Tabloid. But neither his personal life nor his professional life has any forward momentum; he's occupied the same cubicle since the first George Bush was president and is currently "between girlfriends." At thirty-two, it starts to occur to him: There's a fine line between picky and loser.

Enter a sly, beautiful coworker named Julia. After a few torrid dates, Tom is hooked. "She's like cleaning behind my refrigerator. A once-in-a-lifetime thing." But the closer he gets to Julia, the more elusive she becomes. Frustrated, Tom seeks the dubious advice of his buddy Shooter, a shallow sexual gladiator, and wonders why he keeps getting into arguments with Bran, his smart, sarcastic "default date." But then tragedy strikes, and everyone's attitudes toward life and love change -- and even Tom begins to see himself in a new light.

By turns riotous and tenderhearted, Kyle Smith's Love Monkey is the most candid and excruciatingly funny exploration of the male mind and libido since High Fidelity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061747069

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the author of Love Monkey, the hit novel that was adapted into a CBS television series starring Tom Cavanagh and Jason Priestley. He is also a movie critic for the New York Post, which posts his reviews online each week at nypost.com. He lives in New York City.

Reviews for Love Monkey

[angelalam-300700 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked up this book because it was hailed to be the next best thing after HIGH FIDELITY but it wasn't. Not really.

Sure, the loser-boy fumbles his way through several simultaneous relationships while in a dead-end job and with slacker friends who do nothing to inspire him, but Kyle Smith does not have the same sparkling wit as Nick Hornby does.

There were some highlights in the book: the peek view on men's view of relationships (we cheat on wonderful women because relationship for guys are like a buffet dinner to a starving man and he must have everything offered whether he likes it or not) to a guy's reluctant-to-admit-even-to-himself state of his job (I guess I will die in this cubicle if I keep doing what I have been doing) to a guy's commitment-phobic state of grace in the face of true love (I will always remember how she wanted to be with me--and that's all) even after he loses The One.

But, over all, it was less than HIGH FIDELITY. Not a bad attempt at lad-lit, but not the classic it was reported to be.

[aramissciant · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It is a short, fun and quite light novel. In the blurbs, someone calls the author the 'male Candace Bushnell' and the novel the 'male Sex and the City'. That, it must certainly is not. But it's still funny and makes you smile a lot. The city does indeed feature a lot but it never feels an integral character as in Bushnell's novels.

[addunn3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A New York tabloid writer/editor tells his story of love and lack of. Some interesting incites but just doesn't seem to go anywhere.