Literary.

ALMA COGAN | GORDON BURN (1992):* WHITBREAD BOOK AWARD. In the book the New York Times Book Review calls "the greatest novel ever about pop culture," Burn reimagines the career of real-life '50s pop singer Alma Cogan.

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RELATED ARTICLE: BOOKMARKS SELECTION

****

The Monsters of Templeton

By Lauren Groff

You can indeed go home again.

After a grievous affair with a married professor, grad student Wilhemina "Willie" Upton returns home to Templeton, New York, on the same day that the carcass of a prehistoric beast floats to the surface of Lake Glimmerglass. Upon Willie's arrival at haunted Averell Cottage, Willie's mother, Vi, unexpectedly reveals that Willie's biological father, long considered a stranger, is, in fact, a prominent resident of Templeton. Vi refuses to divulge his name but offers Willie a clue: he, like the Uptons, descended from Templeton's founder, Marma-duke Temple. Using her research skills, Willie sorts through letters, journals, and newspaper articles to piece together her family tree while unearthing Templeton's unsavory history.

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Hyperion. 384 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 1401322255

Christian Science Monitor ****

"The whole find-your-real-dad scavenger hunt is a little contrived. ... But Groff has concocted such a rich trove of source documents--portraits, old letters, journal entries, and reminiscences by characters lifted from Fenimore Cooper's writings--that readers will be too busy gleefully burrowing into the fictitious past she has created to mind." YVONNE ZIPP

Denver Post ****

"Journeying through the pastiche of past and present feels much like going through an extremely well-written and well-documented family scrapbook (and uncovering a few skeletons along the way). ... The result is riveting, fun and unpredictable." ROBIN VIDIMOS

Miami Herald ****

"The Monsters of Templeton is part mystery and part history. ... The ingenious use of photo illustrations of Willie's relatives is irresistibly effective, and, as Willie works to unearth her father's identity, Groff turns her story into a meditation on the nature of change and how evolution--of a place, a family, a person--even if it's difficult and unsettling, can bring joyous rewards." CONNIE OGLE

San Francisco Chronicle ****

"Reading this exquisite book is like swimming through warm water filled with wondrous things--bizarre grottoes, panoramas from history--floating in a kind of timelessness. ... Groff is a master at using art as a pair of gloves with which to handle dark things, but one has the sense she doesn't yet realize either the depth of her talent or the depth of insulation it provides from the human pain she handles." LAUREL MAURY

Toronto Globe and Mail ****

"It is indeed a scrapbook of a creature, with its compelling weave of historical and contemporary story linked with photos, historical journal excerpts, letters and dramatic monologues of long-dead characters who appear in the book as though summoned in a seance. ... The characters from the past burst off the page with alacrity and distinctiveness, and it's nothing short of genius that she can present such diversity in voice and character." CHRISTY ANN CONLIN

New York Times ****

"[Ms. Groff] tries out more voices and documents than she can comfortably create. But it speaks well for her narrative talents that Willie Upton, disarming and smart, holds even more interest than the elaborate events that surround her." JANET MASLIN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Based on the works of James Fenimore Cooper--particularly The Pioneers, in which the celebrated novelist reimagines his hometown, Cooperstown, New York, as Templeton--Lauren Groff's debut novel startled critics with its originality and power. Despite its magical realist elements, The Monsters of Templeton is primarily an exploration of the history of Templeton and its monsters of the decidedly human variety. Willie is an engaging and likable character, and the plot is driven forward by the imaginative use of invented source documents and vintage photos culled by Groff from antique stores, flea markets, and even eBay. The only complaint? A few too many voices and sources. Compared to Carol Shields, "only more whimsical and inventive" (San Francisco Chronicle), Groff is a promising new writer who has penned an innovative, entertaining first novel.

***

RELATED ARTICLE: Beautiful Children

By Charles Bock

What happens in Vegas ... you know.

In 21st-century America, it's not uncommon for the story of a missing child to dominate the television for days, inviting comment from anchors and commentators, pundits and wonks, celebrities and sleazebags. In this novel, Charles Bock uses the missing-child device to do something similar to that most 21st-century of cities, Las Vegas. In a narrative that ignores many of the rules of linear time and even more of the rules of sexual propriety, Bock enters the lives of a cross-section of fascinating, though unlikable, Vegas personae, from a stripper to her pierced boyfriend--all connected to the disappearance of a spoiled 12-year-old boy. Along the way, we discover that many of them may be little more than spoiled children themselves.

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Random House. 432 pages. $25. ISBN: 1400066506

NY Times Book Review ****

"One word: bravo. ... In Beautiful Children, Bock's vision and voice create a fictional landscape as corruptly compelling as Vegas, and as beautiful as the illusions its characters cling to for survival--illustrating what he calls 'the nobility inherent in struggles that cannot be won.'" LIESL SCHILLINGER

Washington Post ****

"[Bock's] ability to share a deep understanding of America's million or so lost street kids and their tormented parents gives the book a whiff of greatness. ... Beautiful Children is not an easy read, nor is it a polished work." JOHN BURDETT

Seattle Post-Intelligencer ***

"The novel's chief objective is to offer a fresh vision of the people who make up Las Vegas, outside of the gloss and glitter. As such, it succeeds primarily as a succession of interwoven character studies: a stripper named Cheri Blossom, her boyfriend Ponyboy, a comic-book artist named Bing Beiderbixxe, and a somewhat aimless fellow called Lestat." FRED LEEBRON

Los Angeles Times ***

"Beautiful Children is bloated by a serpentine narrative voice that flashes back, forward and around time. ... The core story Bock tells is rich and compelling ... and his evocation of Las Vegas is cunning and true, enough to make one wonder what Beautiful Children might have been like had the author not tried all his tricks at once." TOD GOLDBERG

Oregonian ***

"The question that dogged me throughout was, when does vivid, sometimes even glorious, writing about drug abuse, self-abuse, delusions and (especially) self-delusion, become de facto glamorization of it?" MAYA MUIR

Boston Globe ***

"Even when it's not really believable, sex becomes the salvation for all troubles, including the anguish of having a child go missing. Thus Bock manages to trivialize his most important theme, and by throwing in the antics of so many characters who are drugged, homeless, hustling, pimping, God knows what, he dilutes what he has to say." ROBERTA SILMAN

New York Times *

"Beyond knowing that his characters are en route to trouble, Mr. Bock has few clear destinations in mind for any of them. This book's structure is so slack that it seems like a string of overlapping individual sketches, some much better than others." JANET MASLIN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

This novel about Vegas has been the subject of considerable hype, including a full feature on Bock in the New York Times Magazine. Only a few reviewers found Bock's debut Beautiful Children brilliant, but to elicit such a reaction, Bock needs the critical equivalent of a straight flush. He needs readers who are willing to accept pages and pages of explicit sexual description, an unorthodox narrative structure, unlikable characters, and an ending that may not satisfy the logic of the missing-person plot. For readers willing to accept all these, or for readers heavily invested in the book's milieu, Beautiful Children will provide ample payoff. But many readers will find this crowded intersection of postmodern storytelling and postadolescent characters a mere full house.