The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

The day I returned to Templeton steeped in disgrace, the fifty-foot corpse of a monster surfaced in Lake Glimmerglass. It was one of those strange purple dawns that color July there, when the bowl made by the hills fills with a thick fog and even the songbirds sing timorously, unsure of day or night.

from page 1, The Monsters of Templeton

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff tells the story of Willie Upton and her search for her father. Willie is a descendant of Marmaduke Temple, the founding father of Templeton, the sleepy little town where she grew up. Both of her mother's parents were descendants of Temple--one through his marriage and the other through his dalliance with the family's slave. For years Willie's mother, Vi, regaled her daughter with the story of her conception: how Vi left home as a teenager for a hippie commune in San Francisco where pot and free love were the norm; how Vi could never be sure of Willie's father because she was with a different man at the commune nearly every night. When Willie comes home to nurse a broken heart and ponder her future, Vi drops a bombshell: Willie's father is actually a man in town who also claimed to be a descendant of Marmaduke Temple through some ancestor's extramarrital affair. This is a genealogical mystery as Willie trolls her family tree looking for the branch that spawned her father. Nearly equal time is give to the many, brightly colorful, vividly drawn characters that populate Willie's family tree. The narrator shifts from Willie to other ancestors as she searches for the one from whom her father is descended.

You will enjoy this book as much for the mystery of Willie's paternity and the nature of the monster that is found in the lake as you will for the humorous, eccentric characters that populate the novel. I highly recommend you try out this book. It is available upon request from Lebanon Community Library and Myerstown Community Library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Comments

Anonymous said…

Hi Ms. Angie!
I'm so glad to see a review of The Monsters of Templeton on your blog! I loved this book...it's been a while since I've read a book that I couldn't wait to get home to read more of! Poor Glimmy!

July 3, 2008 at 4:13 PM

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip. I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage. The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it. It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger. Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read. Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one. Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment. The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story. It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve. Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week. This particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

Search This Blog