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Summary
Summary
"The day I returned to Templeton steeped in disgrace, the fifty-foot corpse of a monster surfaced in Lake Glimmerglass." So begins The Monsters of Templeton , a novel spanning two centuries: part a contemporary story of a girl's search for her father, part historical novel, and part ghost story. In the wake of a disastrous love affair with her older, married archaeology professor at Stanford, brilliant Wilhelmina Cooper arrives back at the doorstep of her hippie mother-turned-born-again-Christian's house in Templeton, NY, a storybook town her ancestors founded that sits on the shores of Lake Glimmerglass. Upon her arrival, a prehistoric monster surfaces in the lake bringing a feeding frenzy to the quiet town, and Willie learns she has a mystery father her mother kept secret Willie's entire life. The beautiful, broody Willie is told that the key to her biological father's identity lies somewhere in her family's history, so she buries herself in the research of her twisted family tree and finds more than she bargained for as a chorus of voices from the town's past -- some sinister, all fascinating -- rise up around her to tell their side of the story. In the end, dark secrets come to light, past and present day are blurred, and old mysteries are finally put to rest. The Monsters of Templeton is a fresh, virtuoso performance that has placed Lauren Groff among the best writers of today.
Author Notes
Lauren Groff graduated from Amherst College and received an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her books include The Monsters of Templeton, Delicate Edible Birds, and Fates and Furies. Arcadia won of the Medici Book Club Prize. Her fiction has also won the Paul Bowles Prize for Fiction, the PEN/O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize.
Her work has appeared in numerous magazines including the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Tin House, One Story, McSweeney's, and Ploughshares, and in the anthologies 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and three editions of the Best American Short Stories.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Groff's lyrical debut, 28-year-old Wilhelmina "Willie" Upton returns to her picturesque hometown of Templeton, N.Y., after a disastrous affair with her graduate school professor during an archeological dig in Alaska. In Templeton, Willie's shocked to find that her once-bohemian mother, Vi, has found religion. Vi also reveals to Willie that her father wasn't a nameless hippie from Vi's commune days, but a man living in Templeton. With only the scantiest of clues from Vi, Willie is determined to untangle the roots of the town's greatest families and discover her father's identity. Brilliantly incorporating accounts from generations of Templetonians-as well as characters "borrowed" from the works of James Fenimore Cooper, who named an upstate New York town "Templeton" in The Pioneers-Groff paints a rich picture of Willie's current predicaments and those of her ancestors. Readers will delight in Willie's sharp wit and Groff's creation of an entire world, complete with a lake monster and illegitimate children. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
With short stories included in the current editions of Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, and Best New American Voices, and this, her first novel, carrying a splashy blurb from Stephen King, it appears to be Groff's breakout year. And her book is a fantastically fun read, a kind of wild pastiche that is part historical novel and part mystery, with a touch of the supernatural thrown in for good measure. Willie Upton returns to her hometown of Templeton, New York, pregnant and ousted from a prestigious archaeology program for carrying on an affair with her married professor. What's more, her mother, an ex-hippie single parent long considered the town oddball, informs Willie that her father, rumored to be a former commune member, is really a stalwart town citizen. Willie soon sets out on a furious quest as she delves into the town archives in search of more information about her lineage. The expansive, rollicking narrative eventually grows to encompass diary entries, letters, and guest appearances by Natty Bumppo, the founder of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and a couple of loony relatives.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
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, Cooperstown, N.Y. 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 Cooperstown'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. There's also a Greek Chorus of joggers who have been a steady pack from their teenage years into their present middle age. And there's the overriding metaphor: a dead monster that's surfaced in the middle of the town lake. And that isn't even the main plot. That concerns the sudden return to Templeton, a stand-in for Cooperstown, of Willie Upton, daughter of Vi, a hippie single mother turned, in her latest incarnation, born-again Baptist and girlfriend of a local sky pilot. Willie has fled Stanford after an affair with a professor has left her pregnant, and trying to run the professor's wife over has left her (possibly) wanted by the law. Vi does her best not to let her daughter sink into housebound self-pity. Perhaps, though it's not clear, that's why she lets slip that Willie's father was not some long-lost hippie fling but one of Templeton's citizens. The father doesn't know he's a father, and Vi won't tell Willie who it is. Willie's quest for her father is Groff's excuse for the invented letters and memoirs and diaries. But as Diane Johnson once wrote, quoting Poe, in a review of A.S. Byatt's "Possession," nobody loves an epic. When, for instance, correspondence between a widow and her close friend descends into confessions of poisoning and arson and prostitution and debauchery, and from there into blackmail and swindling, Groff has come up with something like Yankee noir, or maybe Jim Thompson adapting "Wisconsin Death Trip" as screwball comedy. This sort of literary detective work has made for terrific novels like "Possession" or Josephine Tey's "Daughter of Time," in which Tey's hero absolves Richard III of the murder of the princes in the tower without ever leaving his hospital bed. But Diane Johnson spoke for those of us who gobbled up "Possession" but skipped those damn poems about fairies (sorry, faeries) to get on with the story. You can't skip the inventions in "The Monsters of Templeton"; they are necessary to the tale. But the way Groff has chosen to share Willie's discoveries serves the plot far less than it serves her showing off. And, it has to be said, she's got a bit to show off. A first-time novelist sets herself a nearly impossible task by employing characters invented by a novelist acknowledged as an American master. Unlike James Fenimore Cooper, though, Groff can write. ("There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write English," Mark Twain wrote, in 1895, "but they are all dead now.") And while I loved the unintentional effrontery of showing up that unreadable great, I was also conscious of being a captive audience at a recital. "The Monsters of Templeton" is propelled, and undone, by ambition. Where it is intermittently saved, especially in its final scenes, it's by simple, even sentimental, emotion. The irony is that the sense of peaceful completion in these final scenes is not the result of Groff's digressions and encrustations. The emotion is what happens in spite of all that. The book's last three pages, a poem spoken from the point of view of that dying monster, are lovely, mournful, even wondrous. Getting there is wearying. In the end, all of Groff's parodies and pastiches cannot disguise that she's written a very simple tale of homecoming and reconciliation. Her talent appears to be simpler and more openly emotional than she acknowledges. Though she throws in ending after ending, Groff also ties things together quite nicely; if what had preceded these multiple endings had been less showy, you could even say satisfyingly. In Steve Erickson's recent novel "Zeroville," a film editor describes his job as freeing the true movie from the false one in which it is imprisoned. That's the work that hasn't been done on "The Monsters of Templeton." A story told through family trees, diaries, letters, faded old photographs. Charles Taylor is a columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark and for Bloomberg News.
Guardian Review
Willie Upton, last in line of the founders of her home town of Templeton in upstate New York, returns in disgrace from college. That same day a dying prehistoric monster surfaces from the depths of the nearby lake, bringing chaos - as Willie herself will too - to the placid backwater. Bruised from a catastrophic affair with her PhD supervisor, Willie finds her hippy mother has become an ardent Baptist, and that her father is not, as she had thought, a nameless one-night stand from a San Francisco commune, but a citizen of Templeton. The clues to his identity are embedded in Willie's ramshackle family tree. As she investigates, ghosts from the town's past rise up, revealing a history of murder, madness and thrilling mayhem. Groff drew on her own birthplace, James Fenimore Cooper's Cooperstown, to create Templeton. The result is a pleasurably surreal cross between The Stone Diaries and Kind Hearts and Coronets Caption: article-Taylfirsts.1 Willie Upton, last in line of the founders of her home town of Templeton in upstate New York, returns in disgrace from college. That same day a dying prehistoric monster surfaces from the depths of the nearby lake, bringing chaos - as Willie herself will too - to the placid backwater. - Catherine Taylor.
Kirkus Review
Cooperstown, N.Y., and its most famous native son provide first-time novelist Groff with much of the grist for this sprawling tale of a young woman searching for her father. In The Pioneers, James Fenimore Cooper rechristened his (and Groff's) hometown as Templeton; she not only adopts the name, but grafts her protagonist onto the family tree of a character from the novel, Judge Marmaduke Temple. Grad student Willie Upton slinks back into Templeton in the summer of 2002 just as the corpse of a mysterious, 50-foot creature surfaces in Lake Glimmerglass. She's had a disastrous affair with a married professor and isn't sure she can go back to Stanford, Willie tells her feisty single mother. Vi, who always claimed not to know which member of her San Francisco commune knocked her up in 1973, has a surprise of her own. In truth, Willie's father lives in Templeton and doesn't even know he has a daughter. Vi won't tell Willie his name, but (implausibly) drops a big hint. Like Vi, Willie's dad is descended from Judge Temple, who apparently scattered illegitimate children across the 18th-century landscape. As Willie hunts through old documents for clues to her parentage, the voices of generations of Templeton residents mingle with those of such archetypal Cooper creations as Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook in a narrative that winds through 250 years of American history. The secrets uncovered include murder, arson, poisonous intra-family rivalries and the exploitation of slaves and Native Americans. The leviathan pulled out of the lake seems less of a monster than some of Templeton's respectable founders. Willie and other contemporary citizens are far nicer; readers will be pleased when the likable heroine meets her father, reconciles with Vi and forms a tentative new relationship with a decent guy. But there seem to be two novels here, and they don't fit together terribly well. Flawed, but commendably ambitious and stuffed with ideas--many of them not well developed, but inspiring hope for a more disciplined second effort from this talented newcomer. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Twenty-eight-year-old Willie Upton has just detonated a promising academic career by her scandalous affair with a married professor. Now pregnant, she slinks home to Templeton, NY, just as an enormous dead monster is pulled from nearby Lake Glimmerglass. There, Willie's mother, a former hippie, admits she has always lied about Willie's paternity and discloses this one clue about her biological father's actual identity: he is a descendant of Judge Marmaduke Temple and currently a prominent member of Templeton. Sound familiar? Pay attention: James Fenimore Cooper is from Cooperstown, NY (as is Groff) and used it as the model for Templeton, NY, setting of The Pioneers. Yes, Groff has daringly used Cooper's Templeton and its inhabitants as the launching pad for Willie's search for her father. Willie takes her mother's clue and pulls on it, following endless strands to get her answer, all the while tormented with indecision about her own pregnancy. Liberally peppered with old photographs, diary entries, letters, and a family tree constantly in need of revision as Willie eliminates one possibility after another spanning more than two centuries of shocking Templeton history, this is an irresistible adventure. Highly recommended.--Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
