Alice's review
The Monsters of Templeton
by Lauren Groff
Alice's review
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
Alice's review
rating:
bookshelves:
read-in-2008
** spoiler alert **
I never really got into this book. While I appreciated the author's obvious affection for her hometown, on which the fictional Templeton was based, I didn't care much for the characters. I liked the sense of history & oldness -- that these townspeople have been rooted in Templeton since its founding, that the Marmaduke Temple family's lurid escapades are the stuff of Templeton lore. I also loved the monster, which kept reappearing every so often in the book.
A lot of things felt forced, though - the friendship between Willie and Clarissa (which was reduced, at one point, to a one paragraph catalogue of all the things they'd done together in college), the whole Ezekiel Felcher / Queenie thing, the Running Buds mini side stories.
But what I really did not like were the 'historical documents' that the author wrote. (This is the major reason why I didn't like the book.) As an erstwhile history major, I kind of took offense to the fact that Willie was THE luckiest researc...more
A lot of things felt forced, though - the friendship between Willie and Clarissa (which was reduced, at one point, to a one paragraph catalogue of all the things they'd done together in college), the whole Ezekiel Felcher / Queenie thing, the Running Buds mini side stories.
But what I really did not like were the 'historical documents' that the author wrote. (This is the major reason why I didn't like the book.) As an erstwhile history major, I kind of took offense to the fact that Willie was THE luckiest researc...more
