Reviews

Books

The Monsters of Templeton

By Lauren Groff (Voice/Hyperion)

Homesickness has its benefits. Lauren Groff's first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, had its origin during a winter when she found herself far from her hometown, Coopers town, NY. To combat her yearning for familiar surroundings, Groff - whose stories have appeared in The Atlantic and Ploughshares as well as a "Best American Short Stories" anthology - began reading about the town's history and also, poor girl, reading the novels of another native, James Fenimore Cooper. As Groff describes it in her author's note, "the facts drifted from their moorings". What's more, Groff writes, Cooper's characters walked in on her imaginings and "joined the party", as did some of Coopers town's most durable myths. If Groff had delivered all this homesick study and rumination over cherished tall tales in maximalist prose, The Monsters of Templeton might have been insufferable. It isn't. Groff has kitted out this tale of a prodigal daughter with a genealogy (told via family trees, diaries, letters, newspaper clippings, faded old photographs) and chapters in which Cooper characters like Chingachgook and Natty Bumppo take over the narrative. And she pulls off surprisingly much of it without making us cry Uncas.

All the Sad Young Literary Men

By Keith Gessen (Viking)

Fiction writers emerging from the world of journals often want to write about the hungers of their generation, the wants and hopes, the dreads and fussing, that might characterize a group of brainy young people struggling for success at the prime of their lives. One must assume that Keith Gessen has witnessed these struggles up close - not merely in his own backyard, but in his bathroom mirror - for he writes about them with the kind of knowledge you don't find on Wikipedia. The ambition of young literary Americans is a kind of trench warfare, and Gessen, an editor of the magazine n+1, proves himself not only a capable observer but a natural novelist with a warm gun. The New York Times Syndicate

Ways to Seek for Love (Xunzhao Wennuan Ai de Fangfa)

Talking about sex with teens is a challenging task for most Chinese parents. This book, published by Guangdong People's Publishing House this month, might offer some help for those who are seeking tips about to discuss growing pains with their children.

It is a collection of cases by Zhang Yinmo, a columnist for a number of teenager-targeted national magazines and journals, dealing with the emotional issues teenagers face concerning sexuality.

The book is mostly based on her interviews with 13 boys and girls from high school who shared their stories and feelings with Zhang. The teenage voices the writer has collected are articulate and refreshing, covering a wide range of issues, including menstruation, fantasies, masturbation, the decision to have sex, pregnancy, and their relationship with parents.

Zhang is non-judgmental about the sexual choices of teens in the sense that she does not automatically condemn young teens having sex or the frank discussion of sex. But she is judgmental in the sense that she thinks that there are productive and unproductive ways to deal with sexuality and make important choices, and her aim is to help teens and their parents sort through issues.

The book could be helpful for both teenagers and parents. But this is not a self-help manual, and so there are no instructions about how to sort out sex problems, but it is likely that most readers will be able to find someone to identify with in one or more of the cases collected here. Seeing how the teens in these stories come to terms with their troubles and sort through them can be helpful to readers grappling with their own problems. Ou Shuyi

(China Daily 04/24/2008 page20)