SOURCE: "No Place to Call Home," in New York Times Book Review, November 10, 1991, p. 52.

In the following review, Smith assesses Monkey Island as an honest portrayal of homelessness, particularly the rarely dealt with issue of homelessness as it affects members of the middle class.

One autumn morning 13-year-old Clay Garrity wakes up in a welfare hotel in Manhattan and discovers that his mother has left him. Clay's father, who has also disappeared, is an unemployed magazine art director. His mother, until recently, had a job working with computers. Clay is white, he has been to good schools (he can read Robinson Crusoe)—an atypical homeless child. He is the hero of Monkey Island, Paula Fox's delicate and moving novel, one of the first describing middle-class homelessness for young readers.

The sight of homeless people pushing shopping carts down the street or sleeping on benches in local parks has...