The novel Monkeys (2000) by Susan Minot, is a bittersweet story about the lives of the seven Vincent children and their parents, an upper-middle class suburban New England family. The Vincents, a well-to-do but emotionally troubled (due to the alcoholism of the father), family live in an upscale Boston suburb. The seven Vincent children are often called "monkeys" by their mother, especially when she is trying to round them all up to go somewhere together, such as to church or on a family outing. It is from this (sometimes often all that affectionately-spoken) nickname that Rosie Vincent bestows on her large brood that the book takes its title. The storyline of Minot's Monkeys follows the lives of each of the seven Vincent children, as they grow (uneasily, due to the "family secret": their father's alcoholism that inflects all aspects of family life) toward adulthood and independence. Monkeys seems at the outset a mere heartwarming story about a large boisterous American family. However, the reader is quickly disabused of that idea. For example, even as the seven Vincent children get ready for and attend church in the book's opening scene, each of the family members, including the narrator, seem emotionally separate even when physically together: alone with his or her thoughts and childish priorities, and unsupported emotionally by any of the rest. Each child clamors for privilege and attention, yet none seem to ever be truly noticed as individuals, by their mother or even by one another. .

             The story takes place during the formative years of the seven Vincent children, in the 1950's and 1960's. Rosie Vincent, their mother, is a dutiful Catholic woman who regularly accompanies her children to church each Sunday. Rosie is in fact the (albeit often passive-aggressive) "glue" that binds this large (as today's psychologists would put it) "dysfunctional" family. Mr. Vincent, her alcoholic husband, on the other hand, is a hard-working, successful man who seems nevertheless to be always separate from his wife and children, emotionally and physically, i.