The Monsters of Templeton

Don't Waste Your Money

I really wanted to like this book. It has history, mystery, scandal, etc. It is a first novel for the author and I noticed she did some research to write the book. In the end, it took me almost a year to finish it. I read lots of other books, but this one dragged on. I had more interest in Clarissa, Willie's best friend, than I did with Willie. Save your money for a really great book and borrow this one from a friend or the library.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

A NEW FAVORITE

An excerpt of my First Look review, full review originally published and copyrighted on my website - www.randomwonder.com:

What can a person say about a book given the gold seal stamp of approval by Stephen King? In what manner will this review add to the mass of hype surrounding such notice? Is, "I liked it" enough? .... There's the wayward grad student, returned home pregnant and humiliated. There's the once flower child, now maturing mother, gone Christian. There's the nice hometown boy willing to pick up the pieces. There's a dying friend and an odd assortment of townsfolk. All in all, a nice tidy little group of characters. However, it's when the dead relatives speak and the monster washes ashore that we begin to see this story as something other than standard. We begin to see why King passed out the gold star...... Ms. Groff saves the best of her skills for the final chapter, the voice of the monster. That chapter alone deserves a nod from the literary gods. Once all the little loose ends have been tied neatly (and not too contrived either) we find hope that something that was lost can be found anew.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

The cover is the best part...

A little disappointing. The writing style was unique, but the characters were not well developed and the plot was a little dull. All of a sudden BOOM! and the book was over. It took me longer than usual to finish this. I wouldn't recommend it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Dont like it

This book is slow and complicated. It does not keep the reader's attention .

Bad sample

This nook sample is from the text of some other book, not The Monsters of Templeton!

0 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Lauren Groff Masters Secrets and Magical Realism

Lauren Groff's debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton, published by Hyperion in 2008, and it is a many-layered story of secrets -- both within a family and within a town. From the moment Wilhelmina "Willie" Upton returns to her hometown of Templeton, more events begin to unfurl, of which she has just recently left many to forget.

What a true disaster Willie's made of everything, really. A mess by her own making and embarrassed by her mistakes and poor personal choices, Willie is now a woman in her late twenties who, although is a smart archaeology grad student, can't really seem to make a good personal decision when it comes to men. She has a devastating end to her scandalous affair with her older, and married Professor, resulting in a pregnancy, and she feels even more intense guilt as she runs away, since she feels that she has abandoned her best friend, Clarissa in San Francisco, who is suffering from a devastating illness that requires many a hospital visit and treatment. It's really much too much for Willie to take in and manage, and since she's afraid that she will be kicked out of school because of her scandalous affair, she returns with her head hung low back to her childhood home and town and especially to her mother, maybe just to escape for a while to wait until either the dust settles, or some form of clarity manages to rise in the muddle of it all. Her mother, Vi, has a Bohemian past but is now a Sunday church regular, and has always raised Willie with the story that her father could have been any one of three hippies at a commune, but she now reveals a secret she's always kept, and which she now sets upon Willie to uncover the truth, if only to distract Willie from the massive mess she's made.

With the monster's corpse coming to the lake's surface, it brings a change to the town. The monster has always been myth, legend, speculation, but the monster was always believed to exist by the town (as much as a monster's existence can truly be believed, though) and no one truly knew the quiet, goodness it held. A whirl of visitors now floods into town to see, record, and report on the monster. Prior to this great event, the many visitors to the town only were tourists visiting the baseball museum, one fashioned after Groff's own home of Cooperstown.

It's an amazing story, full of secrets, ghosts, a monster of a lake, intertwined with love, sadness, regret. Amazing and quirky characters fill the pages, both real people in history polished with a little bit of fiction, along with brilliant humor and dark pain gracing each moment. I found myself comfortable and lolling in the story as I would imagine I would be in a small boat on the monster's lake.

I stayed up late to finish reading this. I was held hostage in the story and kept thinking, "what next?" There is such majesty of language, such smooth stringing of words even more beautiful and melodious when spoken, and I found that Lauren Groff tied up every story line, and not one thing was left out. I was able to close the book satisfied, and know that I didn't have one question left, save for my imagination walking by the lake with one of the characters, waiting for the fog to settle to see if maybe it was a trick of my eyes, or if I just saw one of the many monsters of the town. Great, fabulous, read -- I'm excited to read anything Lauren Groff has coming next!

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0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Wonderful blend of coming home story, family history, and literary figures with a touch of magical realism

I truly enjoyed this novel from start to finish in a way that doesn't happen too often. The introduction by the author, the setting of Templeton, the characters and the alternating voices throughout the book kept me hungry for more. I've already lent my copy out and purchased this book for others multiple times. A winner!

Mad for 'Monsters'

Part curious history and part quirky parable, Groff's ode to her hometown is anything but overwrought. Her charming prose and thick, overlapping plotlines weave an engaging history of Templeton.

Twentysomething Wilhelmina wanders home to regroup from a failed relationship and its resulting pregnancy, surprised and saddened to find the enormous corpse of the town's monster being craned out of the lake. Adding to her worries, Willie's mother admits to purposefully bumbling the facts of her parentage, tasking Willie with an ancestral scavenger hunt through the centuries of the historical flotsam her forebears, the town's founding family, donated to the local museum. Willie's sleuthing changes her ancestry with shocking regularity, drawing a creative, often vicious, backstory. She has only eight weeks to discover the identity of her father, someone her mother admits still lives there in town, someone she probably knows.

An admirably juggled mix of narrative, letters, folklore, and gossip, alongside Willie's mounting personal concerns, warm the tale of a young woman's search for belonging, her drive to find the weight of attachment that accompanies family. Something even the monster knows about.

From the monster whose pale corpse floats atop the lake to the slew of repurposed Cooper characters that pop up delightfully throughout, Groff directs a lively cast with a ringmaster's flair. As surreal and unexpected a story as your grandparents might have made up at bedtime, Groff's concoction is oddly comforting, radiating warmth and density suffused with pure imagination.

Mad for 'Monsters'

Part curious history and part quirky parable, Groff's ode to her hometown is anything but overwrought. Her charming prose and thick, overlapping plotlines weave an engaging history of Templeton.

Twentysomething Wilhelmina wanders home to regroup from a failed relationship and its resulting pregnancy, surprised and saddened to find the enormous corpse of the town's monster being craned out of the lake. Adding to her worries, Willie's mother admits to purposefully bumbling the facts of her parentage, tasking Willie with an ancestral scavenger hunt through the centuries of the historical flotsam her forebears, the town's founding family, donated to the local museum. Willie's sleuthing changes her ancestry with shocking regularity, drawing a creative, often vicious, backstory. She has only eight weeks to discover the identity of her father, someone her mother admits still lives there in town, someone she probably knows.

An admirably juggled mix of narrative, letters, folklore, and gossip, alongside Willie's mounting personal concerns, warm the tale of a young woman's search for belonging, her drive to find the weight of attachment that accompanies family. Something even the monster knows about.

From the monster whose pale corpse floats atop the lake to the slew of repurposed Cooper characters that pop up delightfully throughout, Groff directs a lively cast with a ringmaster's flair. As surreal and unexpected a story as your grandparents might have made up at bedtime, Groff's concoction is oddly comforting, radiating warmth and density suffused with pure imagination.

Odd and original

This book was very differnt than my "normal" selection so maybe that's why I found it so offbeat. It was a great style of writing with the historical flashbacks. Slight bit predictable in the modern day storyline, I totally did not get the lake monster connection, but I think it was over-all a good read, but I still say a very odd story! Might have been a little rushed at the end.

Simply a great story

A great lazy weekend book. Well written and makes you want to shake your own family tree and see who falls out.

Utterly Absorbing and Fascinating

Willie Upton returns to her hometown of Templeton (really Cooperstown, NY) in disgrace, and her mother promptly sets her off on a "treasure hunt" to find her real father. The characters of Willie and her mother are wonderfully detailed and true, and the supporting characters are superbly done. What's also amazing about this book is the "hitorical" documentation provided for Willie's search, almost all of it written in first person accounts. Every voice is distinct and clear, and utterly different from Willie's own voice. Exceedingly well written novel--it helped me get through a VERY long plane ride from DC to Tokyo.

Offbeat for sure !

Sorry, I didn't agree with the other reviews. It was work to read. I thought it "all over the place". I would not recommend.

Monsters of Templeton is a Lyrical and Captivating Read

Lauren Groff writes so beautifully that I found myself having to underline sentence after sentence, just like I did in college. She is also a master of personalization, creating unusual characters that are described incredibly vividly. In addition to being very well written, the plot was also gripping. I couldn't wait to find out whether Willie would get her life together and what else she would discover about her crazy ancestors!

Monstrously good read

Lauren Groff's first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, is a delightful read. I bought it because of its link to Cooperstown, a place I am very familiar with. But it's fascinating to read no matter where you're from. The characters are nicely drawn, the situations each is embroiled in are intriguing, and the history makes it fascinating.

A Great New Author

Lauren Groff uses interesting, original characters and geneological research to tell the story of Willie/Sunshine Templeton and her hometown. It's a fascinating story that's presented in an original way. The Monsters of Templeton is an ode to small-towns and the people who live there.

Style and Substance Walking Hand In Hand

I know that there is an old expression about not judging a book by its cover, however as soon as I noticed this book I was captivated by its artwork, and I wanted to see if it had the substance to back up the style. After finishing the book, I am happy to say that I was not disappointed. The Monsters of Templeton, tells the story of Willie Upton, a young woman who has left her small town of Templeton in an attempt to be a successful archeologist. However, all does not go according to her plan, and she decides to return to her family home-a place where she hasn¿t had to go for comfort in a long time. Around the time Willie returns, the body of an ancient sea creature surfaces in the local lake, which seems to cause secrets from the town, and especially from Willie¿s family¿s past to slowly surface as well. It is very easy to tell that the author, Lauren Groff, is telling a story that is close to her heart, and even though this is her first novel, it resonated with me. I hope that Ms. Groff will release her next work sooner rather than later.

just a different read

Very different from my routine enjoyed the character and the authors ability to go back into a family history with such storytelling loved it !!

A beauty

This book was recommended to me by a friend in the UK. He knew that I was a big fan of James Fennimore Cooper and the Leatherstocking Series. It helped some to have read The Pioneers, as some of these characters are interwoven into a story of a woman trying to find her father.

It was well written, the characters a little eccentric, but Groff did a good job of making them and the story realistic. The time travel aspect of the novel had me at a loss as to who was who, but after awhile I did not care, just went with the story they were telling and let the characters from The Pioneers carry me where they would.

It was a very satisfying read and the novel ended in an unexpected but very satisfactory way. Again expect the unexpected in this little gem.

I read very few books over again, this is one I would probably pick up in 5/10 years time!

I loved this book!

This book was recommended to me by a co-worker and I am so grateful to her for motivating me to pick it up! It is whimsical, real, fantastical, poignant, and mysterious all at the same time. It would have been enough that it is set in one of my favorite parts of the country and involved with some of my favorite literary traditions, but add to that unforgettable characters, modern-day life situations as well as ageless questions regarding self-identity and "finding" one's parents, and you get a truly delightful read.