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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780375708367
ISBN number: 0375708367
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 176
Printing Date: August 08, 2000
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: August 08, 2000
Sale Popularity Level: 336472
Studio: Vintage
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER
In this luminous story of family life--the very first novel by Susan Minot, author of the highly acclaimed Evening--the seven Vincent children follow their Catholic mother to Mass and spend Thanksgiving with their father's aging parents who come from a world of New England priviledge. As they grow older, they meet with the perplexing lives of adults. Susan Minot writes with delicacy and a tremendous gift for the details that decorate domestic life, and when tragedy strikes she beautifully mines the children's tenderness for each other, and their aching guardianship of what they have.
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Rated by buyers 
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At the front of the book are both a table of contents , setting forth a chronology from 1966 to 1979, and a list of characters. The book is slim and so the reader is surprised at the fussy treatment. Gus and Rosie Vincent have six children. Dad, (Gus), goes to church Christmas and Easter only. The rest of the family, Chicky, Delilah, Caitlin, Gus, Mum, Sherman, Sophie are regular attenders. Dad has weird taste, spam. He grew up in Motley, Massachusetts. Now the parents and six children live in Marshport, Massachusetts.
Thanksgivings are spent in Motley with grandparests, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Ma smokes cigarettes and Pa cigars. The children sit at a children's table. Creamed onions are served. There are apple, pumpkin, and mince pies.
The Vincents go to Maine in the summer. In Bermuda, on a real vacation, Gus, age 10, has horrible cabin fever. Caitlin, age 14, is the oldest. Sherman and Chicky are the youngest. Grass in Bermuda is scratchy and rough. The children are told not to bother their father too much. Dad feels the roads in Bermuda are death traps. On the last day his wallet disappears and Gus finds it in the hedge.
In Maine Wilbur Kittredge, the owner of an estate in North Eden, is a special friend of Mum's. At age forty she gives birth to another child, Rosie, nicknamed Minnie. The Vincent parents met each other on a double date. Mum asks Sophie to postpone her suicide until age 18, hoping that by then Sophie would not wish to resort to such means. Sherman, by now age 12, has an appetite for pot.
A train hits Mum's car and she is killed. For the Christmas after her death the girls buy presents for everyone. Minnie shows the others where the decorations are kept. Dad marries a new wife, Pat. Mum's ashes, for the most part, are dropped into a channel at North Eden. The child characters in the novel form an interesting group. Their circumstances are realistic.
Rated by buyers -
I've been on a Susan Minot kick, and so I just re-read this book for the very first time in years.I still enjoyed every page. Minot takes readers inside a large family and puts us right in the middle of the action, or inaction. Although more like linked vingnettes than a novel, Monkeys made me think of a contemporary Cheaper by the Dozen meets the Kennedys. Her writing is flawless and the stories are so simple, so absolutely every-family, I couldn't help be be mesmerized all over again.
Rated by buyers -
"Monkeys" isn't a novel in the usual sense of the word. It is more of a collection of vignettes encompassing about 13 years in the life of a modern family, snapshots of moments in which we come to know each family member, then see how they change as their story progresses.
The most astonishing thing about the book is how Minot ties each piece together. For the most part, the "big" events in the life of the family happen outside the narrative itself, in the space between the snapshots we are given. We may experience these moments as a part of their memories, but we come to understand what they were and what their effect has been in a fractured flow of story.
Minot's prose, as in all her books, is expressive but spare, an economy of words that leaves much up to the reader's interpretation. She tells us just enough to know the family, to understand their quiet successes and their obvious failures, to see both the shape of the mask and what lies underneath it. She gives us the same kind of knowledge that we might have if they lived in a house down the street, a neighborly knowledge, not an intimate one.
For the most part, this is a strong point in the book, but at a few points, Minot's style puts the reader at a distance when we might prefer a closer understanding of the feelings of each family member. In a way, it's the same frustration one experiences when we know something has happened to a neighbor, but we don't know how to ask without seeming nosy or pushy. Perhaps this was a deliberate choice on Minot's part, this enforced distance from her characters, but intentional or not, it was frustrating at times.
Still, despite the occasional frustration, "Monkeys" is a well-rendered series of portraits of a modern American family, the foibles and wrinkles and soft tragedies that make up so much of the family landscape, and shape the people in it. Minot's writing is a delightful and refreshing change from the self-indulgent, overwrought prose most modern novelists love to employ, and in these brief vignettes, and the implication of events occurring between one and the next, we are given the chance to observe the quiet act of disintegration that goes on around us every day.
Rated by buyers 
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This is not a badly written 'novel', but I found that I didn't care a bit about any of these characters -- with the possible exception of the very first couple of 'chapters' (and I put it that way because, to me, this really felt more like a collection of short stories -- and indeed, much of it has appeared in that form in various publications), when they were very young children.
Perhaps because of the way their parents lived and raised them, and the fact that they are so privileged financially, the children grow up to be spoiled and self-centered, with few redeeming qualities -- I know this may seem a bit judgemental, this being a work of fiction, but when I read a book, I try to identify or sympathize with at least one of the characters. Pretty much without exception, all of the children in this book turn out to be brats who never really grow up. There was a quote on the book's cover comparing Susan Minot's work to that of J. D. Salinger -- she's a talented writer, but this doesn't hold a candle to his work.
I much preferred THE TINY ONE, by Minot's sister Eliza -- her style was much warmer and gentler, and the characters she drew much more likable. I've read a lot of good comment's about Susan's writing, so I'm still curious to check out some of her other books -- but this one disappointed me.
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A moving glimpse into the world of a New England family. With such an exuberant, energetic family, enviable social connections, and vacations boating in Maine, are the Vincents living the good life? Of course not. They are miserable. Minot skillfully sketches the framework of pain underpinning these lives.
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