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Monkeys

Monkeys

About the Book

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Funny, wry, and profoundly moving” (San Francisco Chronicle), the “striking and original” (Chicago Tribune) first novel from the award-winning author of Evening explores the intricacies of family dynamics and the multifaceted effects of grief.

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

The Vincents are a large and awkward New England family. Augustus Paine drinks too much; his wife, Rosie, a high-spirited Catholic, holds the family together, towing her seven “monkeys” to church, to boat races, and picnics in Maine. When she dies suddenly in an accident, they are left to cope.
 
Monkeys beautifully mines the children’s tenderness for one another and their guardianship of what they salvage after tragedy has hit. In this time-honored story of American family life, Susan Minot again reveals her ability for illuminating the glances and gestures of affection and heartbreak.
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Praise for Monkeys

“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
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About the Author

Susan Minot
Susan Minot is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, poet, and screenwriter. Her first novel, Monkeys, was published in a dozen countries and won the Prix Femina Étranger in France. Her novel Evening was a worldwide bestseller and became a major motion picture. Her ninth book, published in 2024, is the novel Don't Be a Stranger about a woman searching for herself as a mother and a lover. She teaches at Stony Brook University in the Graduate Writing Program, and lives in New York City and on an island in Maine. More by Susan Minot
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