"Young Tee and her younger brother Toddan are taken home by Tantie, their father's sister, when their mother dies in childbirth. Shortly thereafter, their father goes to England and Tee concludes he left, "to see whether he could find Mammy and the baby." The life Tantie offers Tee and Toddan is full of fiercely raucous love; when Tantie is crossed, "the neighbors for six houses on every side of us were generally aware of this fact." Throughout Tee's early years, Mammy's sister Beatrice - a woman with a voice that sounds "like high-heels and stockings" - attempts to get custody of Tee and Toddan. Tee's love and loyalty to Tantie are strained as she grows up and begins to want the pretty clothes and tidy life Beatrice offers. Tantie's bellowing resistance to Tee's desire to live with Beatrice finally dissolves when Tee wins a scholarship and must move in with Auntie Beatrice's family in order to continue her education. To her dismay, everything about living with Auntie Beatrice makes Tee feel bad and she begins to blame Tantie: "If Auntie Beatrice had whisked us away from the very beginning and brought us here, then I would have been nice... and the front door would not have been forbidding nor the armchairs in the living room disapproving." In rollicking and poignant prose, Crick Crack, Monkey tells the story of a young girl caught between two worlds, neither of which feels like hers."

Share/Like this Review?