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in folklore and historical references.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.
