I found myself hooked on Leaves of Red and Gold right from the first chapter! The book develops the main character so that you not only feel his pain, but you root for him when he triumphs! His scary tormenter freaked me out, but made me want to read more! The book also showed a deep love affair between Matthew and Adam, and how even with troubles they continued to love each other, good times and bad times! I liked how the book showed not only his legal career, but also how important his friends, both straight and gay, were to him. I would recommend that you get this book...it is an exciting gay story and you will enjoy it and want to tell your friends about it!!!

What a novel! Leaves of Red and Gold is an excellent piece of fiction and I agree with the reviewers on this site that it should be made into a movie! Hello HBO! I bought this book and read it in less than three days (I even snuck in some pages at work)...I couldn't put it down! The scenes are so well written that I can see myself walking the Harvard Law School campus with Matthew, the main character. The book has many light moments along with its dark and very thrilling moments. It is so interesting to watch Matthew go from being a child abuse social worker to a great legal force! His relationships with his various boyfriends are also well done, and show that men can love other men in honest, open, and very deep fashion!

I also very much enjoyed the ensemble of characters supporting Matthew in this novel. They are well developed and I can see them all in my head, which tells me that this book is well written. This is why it would be perfect on the silver screen - it is not predictable, it is fresh and new, and it will capture all! I agree with the reviewers that I hope Mr. Chapman is working on his sequel...more quality work like this and we may have a new Tom Clancy on our hands!

Leaves of Red and Gold turned out to be the most interesting book I have read in over a year! You cannot help but be drawn in by the main character -- Matthew Schipani -- as his tale of disappointments, loves, hatreds, frustrations and accomplishments unfolds. Be warned -- the end is riveting and you won't be able to put the book down!

Prepare to e-mail all your cleverest friends and recommend Trials of the Monkey, Matthew Chapman's wickedly funny, politically incorrect diatribe on religious superstition and other human follies.

The narrative is loosely organized around the yearly re-enactment of the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee. In 1925, biology teacher John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution in the public classroom in defiance of Tennessee laws. Chapman has a piquant relationship to his subject: he is the great, great grandson of Charles Darwin, who pioneered evolutionary theory.

Chapman's ostensible mission in this book is to travel to Dayton and report on the re-enactment of the Scopes trial. But this purpose is virtually lost in his wickedly delightful portraits of the people he meets on his journey. Chapman, an Englishman living in New York who writes for the film industry, harbors some predictable stereotypes about the rural southeastern United States. Yet he profiles his victims in such intriguing detail and with such wit that reading his book is a lot like eating chocolate mousse: You know you shouldn't, but it's just so delicious.

The author doesn't spare himself the edge of his own razor-sharp insight. Alternating chapters are devoted to exposing the most sordid moments of his childhood. But what does Chapman's reckless adolescence have to do with the re-enactment of the Scopes trial? This is where you have to read with some subtlety, but the key lies, perhaps, in the following sentence: "When Darwin called his second book The Descent of Man instead of The Ascent of Man, he was thinking of his progeny."

Evolution doesn't always go forward, in other words. Just look at me, the author quips. Similarly, Dayton, Tennessee, which in 1925 gloried in debating evolution with full intellectual vigor, has subsequently subsided into religious complacency and complete denial of scientific discovery, Chapman indicates.

Witty, incisive and shockingly irreverent, Chapman's talents have been largely buried in a pile of unproduced Hollywood scripts. Though he has made millions on his writing, he is virtually unknown to the reading world. With luck, Trials of the Monkey will be the first step in reversing that misfortune.

This book by screenwriter/director Matthew Chapman (who also happens to be the great-great grandson of Charles Darwin) is many things. On one hand, it's a wonderfully told piece of history, examining the Scopes Monkey Trial (many think the whole story was told in the play-and-film INHERIT THE WIND, but - as Chapman shows us - there was a lot more to it than most people know). It's also an enlightening and often laugh out-loud funny travelogue as Chapman journeys to Dayton, Tennessee (site of the Scopes Trial) to check out the Evolution vs. Creation debate firsthand. And, finally, it's a hilarious, heartbreaking, and unfailingly honest autobiography: A man's reflection on his most extraordinary life. Whether writing about the amusing characters he met in Tennessee, giving an account of the ups and downs of his career as an A-list writer in Hollywood, or (most movingly) discussing his family and the death of his mother, Chapman is never less than entertaining, perceptive and unflinching. The author is seemingly unable to completely hate anyone, yet he's also laser-beam precise in exposing their foibles (his own most of all). And for those who don't consider themselves religious but still struggle with existential and spiritual matters, TRIALS OF THE MONKEY could also be a helpful and weirdly inspirational book. I read this in two sittings, and found myself for days after regaling friends with anecdotes and lines from it. I have a feeling that TRIALS OF THE MONKEY may well be a classic-to-be, and one can only hope that Chapman's Hollywood career doesn't keep him from writing more books.

This very unusually organized memoir of Matthew Chapman, great-great-grandson of Charles Robert Darwin, can be tough going at times, but is well worth the effort. The book began as an exploration of Dayton, Tennessee and the Scopes Trial, but ended up as a deep examination of a human being. Mr. Chapman pulls no punches when it comes to his own life and by the end of the book seems to be a man of greater understanding. If you have expectations of what this book SHOULD be, don't read it. As a person who thinks that a person can be spiritual without being religious or a believer in the supernatural, I enjoyed Mr. Chapman's musings on life, religion, evolution, and masturbation. This book is hard to pigeonhole and I know that some reviewers missed the point[s] while trying. Tell your friends about "Trials of the Monkey"!