The Monsters of Templeton.  Lauren Groff.  Fiction.

The only real problem with Lauren Groff’s lovely debut novel is that I read her short fiction collection Delicate Edible Birds first and gave it 5 Stars (a rarity on this blog) – and so she had set the bar incredibly high in my mind.  She didn’t quite clear the bar of Delicate but I was thoroughly engrossed, enchanted, and enthralled by Groff’s Templeton world.

The Good: Groff sets the stage beautifully as Willie Upton returns to her childhood home in infamous Templeton (loosely based on James Fenimore Cooper’s Cooperstown) with her tail between her legs after an affair gone awry with her professor and a pregnancy to show for it.

The book opens with a Loch Ness type monster long believed to exist in the town’s nearly bottomless lake to be found dead.  It’s a great entry into the book – a book of myth, history, legend, and the loss of innocence that comes with development both in a town and in a person.  It sets a perfect stage for everything that Willie learns and the evolution that must come with those lessons.

Without a doubt however, the most fascinating aspect of Groff’s book – is her sublime blending of the contemporary story of Willie, with the history of Templeton as she searches for clues from the town’s past to find her real father.  It’s a rich tapestry that must have been quite an undertaking to weave so perfectly.  There were areas that dragged for me a little personally, but only I think because I was sometimes anxious to get back to Willie and her more present (and pressing) woes.  Overall, and especially as a framework to hang Willie’s story on, it worked tremendously.

The Bad: There is nothing really bad to report in this book.  The ending overall, is the only part that didn’t work for me as well as I would have liked.  I found myself disappointed in the final arc, particularly in how Groff handles the pregnancy, which toyed with my emotions unnecessarily and for me personally didn’t resolve as authentically as I had come to expect in the pages prior.

Additionally (and I won’t ruin the ending by getting too detailed) but I felt the resolution with Willie finding her father was a bit neat and phoned in considering it was the arc that held the entire book together.

Clarissa’s arc also faltered a bit at the end.  She’s a character I loved, but like the arc of Willie’s father, the end of Clarissa’s arc is a bit abrupt and too easy…it didn’t feel earned the way the rest of the book did.

So I suppose I did feel let down by the ending of Monsters in general, as I liked all of these arcs (the pregnancy, the father search, and Clarissa) but I didn’t feel they concluded with the same levels of excellence I had come to expect based on the rest of the book.  As complaints go, not so bad.

The Ugly. Nothing.  This book is stunningly written.  Groff’s prose is absolutely pitch perfect, with not a word out of place.

4.0 Stars

Personal Days.  Ed Park.  Fiction

First, let’s talk about this badass cover.  LOVE IT.  Though it should be noted that my mother couldn’t tell me what the title was…so I guess it depends who your audience is.  If it’s me, you’re golden.  If it’s my mother, you’re dead in the water.

I really liked this book, though I couldn’t come quite around to love.  Park’s book, especially the beginning,  has a lot of similarities with Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came To The End, if only because of the first person plural voice that he uses in his first section (and which Ferris uses almost throughout).  And I had the same reactions to both of them – I loved the voice – a corporate we – that envelopes both all of the characters and none of the characters – and it worked so well from a humorous standpoint and as a unifying cry (i.e. ‘boy do I know how THAT feels’).  However, that same point of view also distanced me and made it impossible for me to really care about the characters.  Both books worked better for me as fascinating well written experiments than as engaging emotional tales.  The cast of characters in both books is large, and because of the voice (among other things) it’s often hard to tell them apart, which is perhaps done on purpose – when we all work in a cubicle aren’t we all the same worker bee drone?  But ultimately I felt held at arm’s length in both books and while it was successful in it’s experimental task,  it’s an experiment that left me wanting more.

In Then We Came To The End, Ferris switches his novel’s voice just when I was about fed up with it and used a third person POV for one of the characters much speculated about through the rest of the book as she struggles with illness.  It was a brilliant maneuver, and one that saved the book for me personally.  But because we had never been with that character until that point, and we never revisited her in that way again it still felt removed and kept me from embracing the book fully.

[SPOILERS]

In Park’s Personal Days, he does a totally different but equally as risky trick in his third and final section.  Part three is one massive (40 page plus) email written from one character to another.  I’m still on the fence as to how I really feel about it, but regardless of what I decide, it remains a brilliant experiment.

It should also give writers everywhere some hope – since we are constantly told – from readers, agents, editors, and other writers “SHOW DON’T TELL” –  that tell can totally work if done effectively.  Park’s part three is the definition of tell.  One character relaying through email to another character, everything that was under the surface and unsaid in the previous two sections.  Brilliant and risky.  But I still couldn’t really connect with anyone.  And so I remain conflicted.

Parks novel, without a doubt is for anyone that toils (or has toiled) in an office (especially a corporate one) and also for anyone that has faced layoffs (which in this market is just about everyone) so Park’s book should be wildly successful.  I think anyone that has worked in an office can thoroughly enjoy this book and relate, and it’s great for a laugh as you recognize yourself and your annoying office and even more annoying co-workers in the pages, but for me at least, it lacks a final ability for me to be able to connect and empathize with the poor souls trapped in the pages.  It should be easy to empathize because they’re me, but something doesn’t quite click on that level and so for me it remains mostly a brilliant experiment.

3.5 Stars

If you want to read a REAL review of Personal Days, check out the New York Times Book Review of it.  I remain, as ever, not even close to the level of the NYT.  <le sigh> Someday.

Things That Pass For Love.  Allison Amend.  Short Fiction Collection

This is a solid and lovely collection of thirteen stories that flow together beautifully, unlike many of the collections I’ve read.  It’s no small feat to make all your stories both unique and also connected in some way, and Amend does it here, perhaps solely through her writing style.

Overall though, I was disappointed in about half of the stories.  They skated the edge of brilliance for me, but never quite got there.  The first story, Dominion Over Every Erring Thing,  is a perfect example of this.  From the first line I was absolutely riveted (and it was actually that first line that convinced me to buy this book over another) however, I don’t feel the story finished well.  At all.  It was not as significant as it should have been, or as powerful as it could have been.  Other stories in the collection finished better – The People You Know Best; And Then There Was Claire; and A Personal Matter finish particularly well while others What Was Over There Is Over Here and  Sometimes It’s Like That were filled with potential, but ended unsatisfactorily for me like the first story.

In the end I loved about half of the collection and felt only mediocre about the rest.  For me, Amend’s strongest were:  The World Tastes Good; A Personal Matter; Bluegrass Banjo; The People You Know Best; and And Then There Was Claire.  These were all powerful, emotionally resonant, beautifully written, and had earned endings that felt real to me.

The rest, for me, came very close, but ultimately fell short.   However, the fact that some of these stories did not work for me personally should not imply that I don’t think very highly of Amend.  She has a beautiful and haunting style that I will actively seek out in the future and I look forward to her next collection to see how her work evolves.

3.0 Stars