"Travel essay, family memoir, or social history . . . its uncertainty is part of its charm . . . His descriptions recall Kingsley Amis at his best . . . Chapman's account of his family's ingrained melancholy, martial betrayals, and tragic decline is graceful and funny."—The Boston Globe

"Compulsively readable, surprisingly touching, and often downright funny."—Jonathan Miles, The New York Times Book Review

"Funny, irreverent, profound, moving, instructive, and entertaining. How I wish that I had written this book."—Peter Coyote,author of Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle

"This book is not just a sneer at freak-show America. Chapman is too aware of his own foibles and failures to curl his lip . . . Hilarious . . . uncomfortable . . . it's also life-affirming, even if life as lived by Chapman is often damnably itchy."—Nigel Richardson, The Daily Telegraph

"A humorous, even funny, memoir of 'de-evolution.' In his insightful, confessional, and intimately human voice, Matthew Chapman reads like he's right there talking to you. My kind of book."—Spalding Gray

"As the monkey of the title, Mr. Chapman tells the story of a family tree 'hopping with regression' . . . A valuable, painfully honest memoir of what it means to be British in the past half century."—The Wall Street Journal

"Trials of the Monkey: An Accidental Memoir is candid, confessional, raunchy, and learned—not four words usually used in the same sentence to describe a work of nonfiction. It is certain to offend some readers, while other readers are just as certain to laugh out loud with glee . . . It is not only an accidental memoir, as the subtitle says. it is also an accidental classic."—The Kansas City Star