May 16, 2008...9:29 pm

The Monsters of Templeton

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The Monsters of Templeton Title: The Monsters of Templeton
Author: Lauren Groff
Publication Year: 2008
Pages: 361
Genre: Fiction
Count for Year: 26

I came across this book, I believe, on a Shelfari group. I saw several people mention it and thought I wonder what all the hoopla is about. So when it arrived at our library on the new book shelf, I thought I’d try it. I really didn’t know what it was about, but I thought if all these people are talking about it, I guess that means I should see what’s up.

So what’s up is college student 20-something Willie Upton, thinking she’s pregnant by a professor, returns to her ancestral home, Templeton, N.Y. just as a monster is pulled out of the town lake, Lake Glimmerglass. Also her mother, Vi, pulls out this: Willie is not the product of a hippie-commune tryst, but Mom won’t say who the father is. So begins a mystery to find out who the father is, and in the background, the mystery of the monster, ghosts of famous ancestors lurk.

The journey takes her through family history, back to the town’s founder, Marmaduke Temple, who brought the baseball museum to town. Yes, the town is based on Cooperstown, New York where Groff was born. In the process, we meet all manners of ancestors and even Chief Uncas and Natty Bumpo himself, some of whom tell their own stories through letters, memoirs, novels they wrote. As such, the book bounces back and forth between the present and the past with some chapters in the voices of the ancestors. Other chapters are told by people in the present, namely, the Running Buds, a group of middle-aged to elderly men, who run through town every day and one of whom Willie thinks might be her father, along with almost all the men in town.

I can’t put my finger on it, but Groff reminds me of someone, yet still has her own voice, which I guess in a way is a compliment. She presents layers upon layers of characters, plots and subplots, all that reveal as they are unpeeled that Templeton has more than one monster, of course. In the end, the conclusions aren’t quite as satisfying as the journey, but the journey was still a good one.

Final analysis: 8/10. Good for a debut novel, but I think she’ll get better than this, and at times, I did lose interest and felt like I was plodding through the book, just to get it finished. But in hindsight, it was a pretty good yarn, if at times uneven and hard to keep track of all the characters, plots and subplots. That, though, is probably the main part of the draw, for some, if not for me.

Others’ reviews:

If you’ve reviewed this book, drop me an e-mail at justareadingfool [at] gmail [dot] com and I’ll link to your review also.

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