Monkeys

by Susan Minot

Overview

 

Minot’s bestselling debut: A moving novel of familial love and endurance in the face of shattering tragedy Monkeys is the remarkable story of a decade in the life of the Vincents, a colorful Irish Catholic family from the Boston suburbs. On the surface, they seem happy with their vivacious mother Rosie at the helm. But underneath, the Vincents struggle to maintain the appearance of wealth and stability while dealing with the effects of their father’s alcoholism. When a sudden accident strikes, their love for one another is tested like never before. Written by the bestselling author of Evening, Monkeys is a powerful story of one family’s struggle to overcome life-changing tribulations and Minot’s wrenching ode to the ties that bind even the most wounded of families. This ebook features a new illustrated biography of Susan Minot, including artwork by the author and rare documents and photos from her personal collection.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781453202944
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	10/26/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	159
Sales rank:	843,449
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Susan Minot is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. She is the author of Monkeys, Folly, Lust & Other Stories, Poems 4 A. M., Rapture, and Evening, which was adapted into the feature film of the same name, starring Meryl Streep.  Minot also wrote the screenplay of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty. Her most recent book is Thirty Girls. Minot was born in Boston and currently lives with her daughter, dividing her time between New York City, where she teaches, and an island off the coast of Maine.

What People are Saying About This

Jayne Anne Phillips

Susan Minot's quietly luminous children are voyagers in a past marked by seaside privilege, ritual Catholicism, and the mysterious lonliness of adults. Her oblique prose establishes a country of childhood in which grief exists like a premonition and children are the saviors of children.

Thomas McGuane

Monkeys is a book of unusual purity and truthfulness. It hardens the line of a world once barely familiar and makes it ours. Susan Minot touches us by her accurate humanity.

Alice Adams

I loved reading Monkeys. Susan Minot writes with such delicacy -- sketches in confident, sure brushstrokes, a lovely book.

Editorial Reviews

Minot chronicles the family life of Gus and Rosie Vincent and their seven children, dubbed ``monkeys'' by their mother. Rosie, or ``Mum,'' is the most vibrant character, creating a secure home for her children as she tries to mask her husband's alcholism and counter his withdrawal from the family. Minot has a fine eye for detail and a talent for creating tension through half-revealed clues in dialogue. However, because the book is very short, involves many characters, and spans roughly 13 years, the development of other characters is not satisfying. The chapters are rather disparate, the first, in fact, having a different narrator than the others. The final chapter, ``Thorofare,'' was included in The Best American Short Stories of 1984 and is perhaps the strongest section, providing a moving ending to an otherwise uneven novel. Lucinda Ann Peck, Learning Design Associates, Gahanna, Ohio

Library Journal

"Minot’s funny, wry and profoundly moving novel of a large and gawky family in Massachusetts is full of quiet surprises.”

San Francisco Chronicle

Minot chronicles the mundane and miraculous moments that characterize family life…Few novels have so powerfully displayed the collective unity—and joy—of family life.”

Chicago Tribune

"Minot's prose possesses a thrilling eloquence, a heartbreaking clarity."—Newsday

"Not since J. D. Salinger has an American writer so feelingly evoked the special affections and loyalties that may develop among children in a large family."—The New York Times Book Review

"Striking and original.... Minot chronicles the mundane and miraculous moments that characterize family life, in prose that is exactingly realistic, yet delicately lyrical.... Few novels have so powerfully displayed the collective unity—and joy—of family life."—Chicago Tribune

"Susan Minot's funny, wry and profoundly moving novel of a large and gawky family in Massachusetts is full of quiet surprises.... Minot is masterful at showing us the chaos of a young family forming and reforming itself. But it is the absolute simplicity of her observation—always selective, often eccentric—that astounds us for its clarity time after time."—San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher