The Monsters of Templeton in What's the Name of That Book???

Jan 30, 2010 karen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sshh-family-secrets, favorites, table

yay!! my suspicions have been confirmed - i am officially not a book snob! i oscillate between thinking i might be a little bit of one, and that any forays i may make into teen fiction or silly bodice rippers that involve byron in some way are just accidents; flaws... on goodreads.com, i feel mostly like the dummy of the bunch, which is a totally comfortable and understandable place for me to be. but then at work, and in my readers advisory class, i feel like the biggest book elitist of all time yay!! my suspicions have been confirmed - i am officially not a book snob! i oscillate between thinking i might be a little bit of one, and that any forays i may make into teen fiction or silly bodice rippers that involve byron in some way are just accidents; flaws... on goodreads.com, i feel mostly like the dummy of the bunch, which is a totally comfortable and understandable place for me to be. but then at work, and in my readers advisory class, i feel like the biggest book elitist of all time. because they are all talking about their romance novelists and their chick-lit and cozy mysteries and COME ON!! these are future librarians!! one of the biggest no-nos in librarian school is to respect the patron and not look down on their reading choices, but it doesn't say anything about not judging your peers. so i do. and i felt like an asshole when they asked what i was reading, and i mumbled "oh the third part in this really complicated norwegian trilogy about television and what makes up the catalog of a life, told without a linear narrative, and no, it's good - it's like proust". blank faces.

but this book i really loved, and i was reading the reviews of it today here on goodreads.com, and so many people hated it for its lack of characterization or weak narrative but i honestly didn't notice anything like that in this. i noticed it big time in under the dome, but i thought this book was really fun, and had something interesting to say, which i did not think w/r/t mr. king. sorry, dude. i am very basic - i want a story told to me. do it whatever way you need to - be as roundabout as kjaerstad or proust, be as straightforward as steinbeck, but tell me a story and make it unique.

and i thought this story was great. it's about a woman unexpectedly pregnant by a man not her own, who returns to her hometown to figure out what to do about it, and then becomes preoccupied with her own family history (i.e. - who's her daddy??). did i mention her town has a lake monster? well, it does. and that is awesome.

i thought, when i was reading it, that it was a wonderful book, particularly a wonderful woman's-book, that covers motherhood, yes, but also the mother-daughter dynamic, sexual complications, nostalgia and rage. all good lady-feelings. dunno, i liked it, but i also like some zombie books - make your choices.

so officially not a snob, but still will never read harry potter...

come to my blog! ...more

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Apr 26, 2008 Trin rated it it was ok

Shelves: american-lit, historicalfiction, fiction

Willie Upton returns in disgrace to her hometown of Templeton, New York (a very thinly disguised Cooperstown) and starts trying to unravel a family mystery that, seeing as Willie is a descendant of Marmaduke Temple, the founder of the town, is intimately intertwined with the history of the entire community.

I really thought I was going to like this book. History and mystery and research! Weird, magical realism touches like the discovery of a monster in the lake! Multiple points of view, including Willie Upton returns in disgrace to her hometown of Templeton, New York (a very thinly disguised Cooperstown) and starts trying to unravel a family mystery that, seeing as Willie is a descendant of Marmaduke Temple, the founder of the town, is intimately intertwined with the history of the entire community.

I really thought I was going to like this book. History and mystery and research! Weird, magical realism touches like the discovery of a monster in the lake! Multiple points of view, including samples of “historical documents”! And yet—I never believed in it: not the community, and not the characters. We’re told Willie is brilliant, and yet she not only goes about her investigation in a frustratingly slow way, she fails at basic math. (Not to mention becomes convinced she’s pregnant and yet NEVER GOES TO A DOCTOR OR TAKES A PREGNANCY TEST.) There are a slew of other ridiculous details the reader is expected to swallow, too: I mean, I will accept a prehistoric sea monster living in upstate New York (Champ is TOTALLY REAL, yo), but I simply cannot believe in a character named Ezekiel Felcher. Yes, FELCHER.

There’s also just something about the narrative that simply…lacks energy. Unlike the similarly-constructed The Rotters’ Club, which practically cracks and sparks off its pages, The Monsters of Templeton just sort of lies there. I felt no zip, no kineticism—no joy. Groff says in the forward that she’s in a sense writing a love letter to her town, but I never really felt that love. I can all-too-easily get caught up in small-town nostalgia—I grew up in one, and the right combination of words or sounds or smells can instantly make me forget all the bad things and remember instead some Ray Bradbury-esque version of the village green, the waterfall over the river, the old mill buildings, the big white church spire. But none of that was here. I got no sense of the layout or the character of the town at all.

Instead, I got Ezekiel Felcher. Yes, FELCHER. Excuse me while I fail to get over that. ...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Melinda Worfolk rated it really liked it

Shelves: women-authors, 2010-2014, mystery-suspense-thriller, fiction, speculative-fiction, magic-realism

I really liked this one! It was a little hard to get into, but I enjoyed it once I got into it. The author does a pretty good job (though not perfect, hence the 4 stars rather than 5) of mixing in "primary sources" like letters by the narrator's dead relatives and long-deceased townspeople.

It's mostly about a young woman trying to figure out her identity--both in terms of her sense of self and her very convoluted family tree. It's also a novel with a strong sense of place; in the Author's Note, ...more

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Jul 04, 2008 Marigold rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction-2000-2010, historical-fiction, fantasy, families

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I really wanted to like this book a lot. It’s got a monster in a lake! It’s got history and secret family goings-on (including photos and “historical documents”). It’s got a loveable town & odd characters with funny names. Unfortunately, it just didn’t do it for me. I hated the main character (Willie Upton). What a whiner! Who has affairs with their college professors anymore, that’s just tacky! She got pregnant & never took a pregnancy test or saw a doctor? OK, then her mother tells her that he ...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Christina rated it it was ok

If asked to create a subtitle for this book (and I know, no one asked me), I would have called it "How Willie Learned Not to Be a Complete Self-Centered Jerk." Our Heroine and Narrator, who has, by the way, the easiest genealogical quest ever (nice of her ancestors to write everything down and occasionally store things in envelopes labeled "Family Secret"), is really quite unsympathetic for most of the novel, and totally unbelievable as a post-doc in archaeology. She does, however, grow up a lit If asked to create a subtitle for this book (and I know, no one asked me), I would have called it "How Willie Learned Not to Be a Complete Self-Centered Jerk." Our Heroine and Narrator, who has, by the way, the easiest genealogical quest ever (nice of her ancestors to write everything down and occasionally store things in envelopes labeled "Family Secret"), is really quite unsympathetic for most of the novel, and totally unbelievable as a post-doc in archaeology. She does, however, grow up a little bit. Side characters (Clarissa, Peter Lieder, Zeke Felcher) are appealing. I kept reading. Those last three sentences, and the fact that Willie's pregnancy turned out in a way I did not expect, are why this book got three stars.
Vi was inconsistent. Her apparently sudden change to born-again Christian, trumpeted as a big deal at the beginning of the book, suddenly disappeared partway through. Willie's quest o' paternity was unbelievably contrived but perhaps that part DID make sense with Vi's character. I was not interested in the multitude of voices, had trouble distinguishing a lot of the ancestral characters, and although I pictured another upstate New York town as I read about "Templeton," the author's love for her hometown fell pretty flat. She cares about the town; she didn't make me care.
It's dangerous for a fiction writer to insert literary criticism (or, in this case, someone reading an author's fiction in order to learn about them) into his or her novel. It inclines me to look for patterns, and to wonder if the author has body issues or if Our Heroine and Narrator is supposed to(there's so much about bellies in this book, and whether they are flat or heavy, and (view spoiler)
I do have to say one thing in the author's favor. It is not her fault that she would, when she writes about the James Fenimore Cooper stand-in and his characters, have a tough audience in anyone who's ever read Mark Twain's hilarious essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." It was hard to take Chingachgook's part seriously when my brain added Twain's parenthetical about how it was pronounced "Chicago." Not your fault, author. Not your fault at all. ...more

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Oct 15, 2008 emily rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-physical, favorites, fiction-nongenre, 2008-to-2010, right-in-the-feels, best-of-women-writers, fiction-contemporary, weird-words-great-vocab

i'd wanted to read this for a long time, and it surpassed everything i was expecting. what drew me in was the narration, groff's writing style is simply excellent and willie is so entertaining and interesting while also being wholly relatable. and then it gets better-- groff gives us a sneak peek into the history of willie's family, from her famous ancestor on through her mother, and the picture we get as she searches for her father is not only of a family's progress through time but also the li ...more

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Jul 13, 2009 Red Fields rated it really liked it

I didn't want it to end. ...more

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Apr 09, 2008 Pam rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio

This was one of those books you just don't want to stop because you just care about the characters so much. I loved that it was based on Cooperstown. It's more fun when you know what it's based on. Great narrator. i highly recommend the audio. ...more

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