The Monsters of Templeton

It's hard to believe that this is a debut novel, given its excellent execution and the way it showcases the author's considerable literary talents.

The plot premise is that our central character, Willie (female), has just returned home to small town New York after a disasterous (and then some) affair with the professor directing her archaeology dig. In short order, she reveals that she believes that she is pregnant, her born-again mother retaliates by saying that Willie's father is not the random nameless hippie that she always believed him to be but, in fact someone in this very town, and a giant monster turns up dead in the lake. And that's just the first pages, mind you.

As part of the quest for her father, Willie sets off on a show more genealogical hunt, dusting off and cross-examining whatever remains of her idiosyncratic ancestors. Groff creates different voices beautifully: we get to hear the voices of the people speak for themselves; we read their letters; we sample their novels; we peek into their journals. We also hear the voices of some of James Fenimore Cooper's characters, plus the voices of some of the residents of Willie's hometown. Groff calls up these voices, and each stands out. I never found myself wondering, 100 pages later, which ancestor made what statement, which would be a problem on might expect in a novel like this.

The cast is simply too eclectic to describe (so give the book a try and read them for yourself!). Once again, let me stress that Groff keeps her Dickensian cast of characters straight, whether they live in the past or present. What they have in common is that they're all colorful, enjoyable, flawed people, true to "life" as we know it. Perhaps, though, the kindest, most sensitive of all is the lake monster, who we hear from only later (I won't say when) in the novel.

Willie's search into her own past is a fascinating detective story for all of us, and it raises questions about what the past means. Groff will not philosophize at you; rather, she uses her ongoing storylines to compell the reader to think about whether the past is a solid chunk of "history" or many little details, how we know when we know enough, how the past feeds in to who we are, how it imprints who we are, etc etc.

Highly recommended. show less

Those of us who grow up in small town America often cannot wait to escape those towns. We tend to head for the big city as soon as we can, hoping to create a new life, one where we can carve ourselves into images of the people we have always dreamed of becoming. But it is to the comfort of those same small towns that we return to recharge our batteries if things in the big city do not go our way.

That is exactly why Willie Upton found herself reluctantly sneaking back into Templeton, New York, early enough one morning that she hoped to make it to her old bedroom without being noticed. She had no other place to go and she hated to admit that to herself. All she knew was that she had probably burned her bridges at Stanford University show more forever and that she needed a place to hide.

But it was not going to be that simple because, in Templeton (loosely based on the author’s hometown of Cooperstown), Willie Upton was somebody, a direct descendent of the town’s founder, an historical link with the past and someone in whom the whole town seemed to take great pride. And Willie had failed to consider the reception that she was going to receive from her mother, the former ‘60s flower child who had, unbeknownst to Willie, recently become a born-again Baptist. Willie would simply not be allowed to sit around the house nursing her wounds or to hide in her bedroom.

Sensing that what her daughter needed to get her through her crisis was a project to give her some focus, Vivienne let slip that Willie was really not the product of the free love that her mother had experienced in a San Francisco commune. Rather, she was the result of a Templeton one-night stand and her real father lived within walking distance of her. Refusing to name him, Vivienne offered Willie only one vague clue as to her father’s identity but that was just enough to set Willie off on a quest through her family tree as she attempted to find the father she had never known.

The Monsters of Templeton is a remarkable first novel that will appeal to history buffs, mystery lovers, and fans of good writing alike. Lauren Groff lets many of Willie Upton’s ancestors tell their own stories, with whole chapters written in their individual voices, and she manages to give each of them a distinct and unique personality. Some of them are likable, others not, and it soon becomes apparent that there are more monsters in this story than the one that dies in the town’s deep lake on the same morning that Willie comes home.

Even though this novel will not be published until February 2008, I don’t think that it is too early to put it on your “to be read” list. I have been meaning to make it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, for several years now and, when I finally do get there, I will not be able to keep myself from thinking about the fictional Templeton and all of Willie Upton’s amazing ancestors. It will be a little like coming home.

Rated at: 4.0 show less

I don’t care what they say, I loved this. Maybe there didn’t need to be a lake monster and a ghost AND a historical mystery, but they were fun as hell to read about. The main plot about a 28-year-old coming home in hilarious disgrace is good too. The narrator is not unfamiliar from Groff's other stories: intelligent, slightly mean but fundamentally decent, neurotic but no more than the rest of us, not necessarily a woman I'd get too close to but interesting and likable enough to follow through a complicated narrative, believable. I liked the female friendships here, I liked the mother-daughter relationship, I liked the town with all its characters and yes, I liked the Running Buds. This book warmed my heart. Fight me.

Lauren Groff's debut novel The Monsters of Templeton (Hyperion, 2008) is a remarkable book, which I would definitely put in my top five for 2008 thus far. Deftly weaving history and literary references with other, less conventional elements (cryptozoology, genealogy, &c.), Groff has crafted a refreshingly original work.

Wilhelmina (Willie) Upton, 28, our main character and sometime narrator, returns to her hometown of Templeton, NY (a scarcely disguised Cooperstown, using the name for the village that James Fenimore Cooper used in his own Leatherstocking tales for the town founded by his father), disgraced and confused. Her mother doesn't help things along by revealing that her unknown father was in fact a Templeton man rather than the show more California hippie Willie had always been led to believe ... and not only was he a Templeton man, but a descendant of the Templeton man, town founder Marmaduke Temple himself (making Willie a direct Temple descendant thrice over, for reasons better explained by reading the book).

Willie has a rough time settling back into Templeton life: renewing acquaintances, living with her mother, dealing with the issues she left behind. But she dives into the quest for her father, gorging on archival research [why, by the way, does every book which features library research have to include a theft?! It's quite disturbing] and reading the Temple canon in search of clues. The clues she finds in letters, diaries and other writings are included in the book, as are first-person narratives from some of the historical characters she comes across. These add much to the novel, and I quite enjoyed them. Oh, and there's a dead lake monster, too.

I think I was particularly taken with the novel because I happen to know Cooperstown quite well; I grew up near there, camped on the shores of the lake quite often and spent several summers working in the print shop at the Farmer's Museum. So I understood the references to the town and its tensions in a way that people unconnected with the place might not do (not that it would necessarily detract from anyone else's reading of the book, I just think it enhanced mine a bit).

One (of the two!) reviews of Monsters in the NYTimes called the work overambitious. Tosh. What are debut novels for if not to be ambitious? All credit to Lauren Groff for writing an ambitious book; it's a fine effort, and I'll very much look forward to the next one.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2008/05/book-review-monsters-of-templeton.html show less

Up surfaced the monster, and after the monster there came the crowd. – from The Monsters of Templeton, page 34 -

Willie Upton arrives back in her hometown of Templeton after a lurid affair with her archeology professor. She leaves behind her potential PhD in the Alaskan wilderness to return to her roots in upstate New York. Hoping to find comfort in a place that has always felt unchanged, Willie instead finds her former hippie mother, Vi, immersed in born-again Christianity and a town in an uproar over the dead body of a monster which as surfaced in Lake Glimmerglass.

I come home to Templeton because it’s the only place in the world that never changes, and I mean never, never changes, and here’s this half-dead lake. I always show more thought, hey, if the ice caps melt and all the cities of the world are swallowed up, Templeton will be fine. We’d be able to make do. Plant vegetables. Bunker up, sit it out, whatever. But it doesn’t seem right anymore. Does it? – from The Monsters of Templeton, page 131 -

Within days, Vi reveals that Willie’s father is not an unknown hippie from the psychedelic days of San Francisco, but instead someone Willie knows well and who shares her family history. On a quest to discover her father’s identity, Willie digs deeply into the backgrounds of the people from the town’s by gone days, and reconnects with friends from her past.

Lauren Groff’s complex and riveting first novel explores identity, the irresistible pull of our pasts, and the history of a small town in upstate New York. Groff based her story on her real hometown of Cooperstown, New York and borrowed liberally from James Fenimore Cooper’s massive cast of quirky characters in constructing a novel rich in folklore and historical references.

Willie is a young woman struggling to find her identity in order to understand her future. As she researches her family history, the characters from her past take turns narrating their often convoluted stories and revealing their dark, well kept secrets. Groff uses actual photographs and constructs ever evolving family trees as Willie gets closer to the truth about her family.

The Monsters of Templeton is really a bit of a mystery novel, an unraveling of the past to solve the question of who fathered Willie. Groff also introduces a bit of magical realism with the monster of Lake Glimmerglass and several ghosts who help guide Willie to clues about her ancestry. But what works the best in the story is the crowd of characters who all vie for their chance to reveal their secrets.

Lauren Groff’s debut novel was nominated for the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers in 2008.

This book is recommended for readers who enjoy character driven novels, historical fiction and a bit of a mystery. show less

There were aspects of this book that I liked, some that showed a great deal of promise, and some that grated on me like broken fingernails on slate. It was an uncomfortable mixture, but owning to the brevity of life, I decided the blend might ultimately taint my experience. Other books I have finished recently have provoked similar misgivings, and in retrospect I don't feel better for having seen them through to the end. Dialogue, style, and literary devices that irritate me too often are very likely to be revealed as something the author might defend as her "voice," and there's no arguing with that. The only option when confronted with a voice that's less than pleasing is to move away from it. Sticking around will rarely make it sound show more sweeter.

And yet I do still think there are some things in this book one can recommend. I just wish those could be teased apart from the rest of the text to see how well they stand on their own. show less

Oh, I'm unwell. I could put a stop-gap thing here, but I'd never get back to do it properly. Here: after spectacular flameout involving chasing the wife of the professor she's been sleeping with on a project in Alaska around an airstrip in a small plane, Willy comes home to Templeton, disgraced and pregnant, on the same day a dead monster floats to the surface of nearby Lake Glimmerglass. Her mother informs her that her Dad is not, in fact, some sort of interesting arrangement of up to three hippie men, but an unknowing stalwart of Templteon. Willy sets out to find him by tracing a few family trees for indiscretions, so we have Willy desperately trying to keep it together in the today and a series of historical voices revealing the show more history of Templeton and the lives of the people who helped create it. It is very, very good. show less