Although in many ways it is very different in tone and technique from her earlier books, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book continues Kingston's quest to explore what is unique about the American experience. The voice is different but the restless probing, the questioning, the humor, the pain, and the anger are similar. Like Kingston's autobiographies, her novel explores the values and norms of American society through the literature, legends, idioms, and parables of another culture. Such a juxtaposition requires a creative use of language and sudden shifts in point of view, which may be unsettling for readers expecting the flow of a conventional novel.

The novel succeeds, but on its own terms. The Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book lacks the structure provided by the autobiographical approach, as well as some of the immediacy and authority of the first-person perspective. Yet the rich imagery and the radical...