The Monsters of Templeton - Wendy's Review

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 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liberally from James Fenimore Cooper’s massive cast of quirky characters in constructing a novel rich in folklore and historical references.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.

Nickelini's Review -- Fault Lines

My comments from Orange July 2010:

Comments: This compelling read is the story of four generations of a family, told in reverse order by the characters as six year olds. The book starts out with the off-the-scales obnoxious Californian, Sol, then jumps back to his father living in 1980s Israel, his grandmother in Toronto and New York City in the early '60s, and finally, his great-grandmother in WWII Germany. I found this book un-put-downable from the first page.

Other reviewers have pointed out its flaws, and there are many. None of the characters actually sounds like a six-year old. Twelve, at the youngest. There is a lot of political agenda crammed into their young minds. And they aren't even every likable, either. The historical detail is pretty sloppy--something that usually drives me crazy. Somehow none of these problems especially bothered me, and I just enjoyed the ride.

Recommended for: readers who are looking for a good read and can forgive its flaws (and handle some politics that rub against US conservatism).

Rating: 4/5 stars

Why I Read This Now: it was the Orange prize book calling loudest from Mnt. TBR.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff (Jackie's Review)

The Monsters of Templeton was short listed for the Orange New Writer's Prize in 2008. It tells the story of a young woman in New York State, as she finds out the secrets of her family tree, in order to discover the truth about her own life.

There were many things I loved about this book. The photos at the start of each chapter made the characters in the historical sections feel much more real, and the continual updating of the family tree throughout the book helped me to understand what was happening, as sometimes the large family became confusing. Unfortunately, some of the historical writing in the book did not seem true to it’s age, and so didn’t come across as very realistic. The letters weren’t as well written as the rest of the book, and I lost interest in a few of the characters further up the family tree.

The modern story in the book was excellent. The main character, Willie, was very well drawn. I loved her, despite her flaws, and really felt for her as she dealt with the problems she was faced with.

I loved the way the discovery of a monster in the lake was made to feel realistic. The scientific analysis of it at the end was particularly clever.

Overall, the way the story was well plotted, and the ending was very satisfying.

Recommended.



Originally reviewed here.

The Monsters of Templeton (TerriLynn)

Quick hello first as I'm new to the blog and have eagerly joined the July challenge. While I've been busy reading, I haven't had time to post yet so this morning I'm posting reviews of what I've read over the past couple weeks. Here it goes . . .


From the Orange Prize website:
The Monsters of TempletonWillie Cooper arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in Templeton, New York, in the wake of a disastrous affair with her much older, married archaeology professor. That same say, the discovery of a prehistoric monster in the lake brings a media frenzy to the quiet, picture-perfect town her ancestors founded. Smarting from a broken heart, Willie then learns that the story her mother had always told her about her father is a lie. He wasn't the one-night stand Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from Templeton.

As Willie puts her archaeological skills to work digging for truth about her lineage, a chorus of voices from the town's past – both sinister and disturbing – rise up around her to tell their sides of the story. Willie discovers the curse of the Temple family runs deep. On the end, dark secrets come to light, past and present blur, old mysteries are finally put to rest, and the surprising truth about more than one monster is revealed.


The Monsters of Templeton is an intriguing tapestry of stories deftly woven together. Willie, the protagonist, returns to her small home town in New York (based upon Cooperstown) in the midst of personal chaos and crisis seeking solace in a place of stability and perceived changlessness. Instead she discovers the "monster" who has reportedly haunted the lake for years has been found dead the morning she arrives, high school characters are changed beyond recognition and her ex-hippe mother, Vi, who she counts on for unwavering predictability has suddenly become a born-again Baptist. As part of her new morality, Vi reveals a family secret that has Willie refocusing some of her self-indulgent angst into solving a mystery about her parentage that uncovers hidden stories of town fathers and mothers (again, loosely based on the lives of the Cooper family including James Fenimore Cooper) while trying to sort out the mess her own life has become. While Willie is whiney, self-indulgent and you just want to smack her and tell her to grow up at times, she is also smart, a smart-ass, and grows on you, especially as she grows during the course of the story. Groff also does a fine job bringing in the voices and stories of the past which can be tricky.