Exceptional writing ruined by an unsympathetic central character

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	• The Monsters of Templeton Lauren Groff Voice, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 61 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Take Your Time

I love to read. Lauren Groff obviously loves to write. Thank God she turned out what became for me an extended tour through the past and current history of a town I've had no previous desire to visit. This was a good escape, and the story encouraged me to take my time, rather than reading in gulps. Like other readers, I didn't always care for our protagonist, Willie. But taken whole, the story enchanted me -- especially the epilogue. And now -- if I drive up to Cooperstown, I hope the baseball tourists are gone & I get to have some time with the town itself.

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Monsters and Ghosts and Scandal, Oh My!

I heard wonderful things about "The Monsters of Templeton" and was very excited to begin reading. The premise is wonderful - Girl comes home pregnant with Professor's baby after trying to kill his wife with a plane in Alaska. Throw in a hippie-turned-evangalist mother and a quest to discover the true story of the small, New York town's founder and you have an imaginative debut novel. I had no problem suspending my disbelief when a dead seamonster rises to the top of Lake Glimmerglass and I thoroughly enjoyed Willie's search to uncover her roots / her father's identity. Goff's novel lost me at the end when the supernatural leap proved too great and the uncovering of the final clues required too much divine intervention. Despite this "oh come on" moment, I devoured this novel and would definitely recommend it.

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Exceptional writing ruined by an unsympathetic central character

Like a few of the reviewers here, I absolutely could not conjure up any sympathy for Willie or her mother, or their plight in any way. The story is well-written, for the most part - but yes, the ever changing family tree gets a bit tedious to follow.

Willie is a narcissist of the first water; someone who regardless of the circumstances of her impetuosity is a partner to adultery and then seems completely blindsided when said adultery results in her being banished, goes berserk and pulls a "Long Island Lolita" type move. If one were so inclined to commit the time, you could examine the circumstances of her conception and unconventional upbringing and conclude that it was the liberal leanings and influence of her mother which caused her to be that careless of the institution of someone else's marriage. But in this case, it doesn't warrant the reader's reflection.

I also agree that Clarissa's was probably the story-line I would have much rather followed as hers engendered much more interest and sympathy from this reader.

Unlike some others, I did enjoy the historical aspect of the book and actually found myself more interested in the storyline of the town's founding brought about by Willie's research than in Willie's story.

Overall, I enjoyed the flow of the book even if it was a slow start.

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Enh

I suggested this book for our book club based on some positive reviews I saw on BookPage and The New York Times, but I'm sorry to say that I ended up regretting it. It was a struggle to get through.

At twenty-eight, Wilhelmina "Willie" Upton finds herself coming home to her little hometown of Templeton, New York, pregnant and reeling from a misguided affair with her married graduate school archaeology professor. Hoping to re-orient herself and decide what to do next, Willie figures a trip home and a visit with her scandalously hippie mother, Vivienne, will help her figure things out.

She's baffled and more than a little dismayed to find that not only has Vi found Jesus and taken to wearing an enormous cross around her neck, she has also decided to drop a bomb on Willie in regards to her parentage: that instead of the nameless man who supposedly sired her back in Vi's free-love hippie commune days, Willie's real father is someone right there at home, a Templeton resident who, like Willie and Vi, is a descendant of the town's illustrious fathers. Willie spends the rest of the book pining about her professor, wondering what to do about The Lump (her moniker for the baby she's carrying), and reading up on the town's history to try and figure out who her father is (her mother won't come out and tell her, but says she'll confirm it if Willie can manage to figure it out).

Groff is a talented writer, I think, and for a first novel it's not bad, per se. I just found it very hard to care about Willie, Vi, or any of the other characters except maybe Glimmey, the not-so-mythical Nessie-like creature who heaves herself up from the town's lake, confirming her existence once and for all. Willie is so neurotic and annoying that I don't think I could stand her if she were a real person. For one thing - and I know this will make me sound like the shallowest bitch ever - I simply could not suspend my disbelief enough to swallow the idea that a young, beautiful woman is seriously lamenting a married, ugly, weak-chinned, paunchy, cowardly man she herself refers to as "Mr. Toad". Even aside from the fact that he's a cad, the man just sounds so repulsive. In the timeless expression of teens everywhere: "Ewwwwwwwwww!"

I also thought the "find your daddy" bit pretty lame. Her mother won't just come out and tell Willie who her father is, but if she happens to find out on her own she'll let her know if she's right? How stupid is that? Of course the reason given is that Willie had to do this searching on her own in order to come to some inner realization about herself or some such thing, but of course it's really just a weak mechanism to enable Willie's character to gad about town, digging in libraries and interviewing crotchety old ladies with long memories - which sounds like fun in and of itself, mind you, but as a plot was thinner than a Britney Spears outfit.

All in all, this one was a dud for me. A fairly well-written dud, admittedly, but a dud nonetheless.

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Great writing style - a Few Loose Ends

I enjoyed the book for Goff's writing style and character development. She creates believable and interesting characters. She sets a plot (the protagonist's search for her ancestors) that keeps the readers interest, yet there's some loose ends and things that don't make sense.

I don't get the whole monster in the lake - is this supposed to be some sort of analogy to the skeletons in her closet? Fearsome on the surface, yet comforting in their longevity? I don't think the author made the connection. I liked the unusual life of Willie's mother, Vivienne, but found the storyline around Willie's father to be ridiculous and hard to believe. By the time we get to the end of Willie's ancestral quest - her answer seems disappointing. The stories of Willie's ancesters are interesting & the old photos that the author combines with help to tell the character's story. I was wondering how much of the author's family stories may have been used?
Overall an enjoyable read - but could have been a great read if the author had tied up the father/ancestor quest in a real "wow" moment.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

"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, this spellbinding novel is at its core a tale of how one town holds the secrets of a family.

In the wake of a wildly disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor, Willie Upton arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in Templeton, New York, where her hippie-turned-born-again-Baptist mom, Vi, still lives. Willie expects to be able to hide in the place that has been home to her family for generations, but the monster's death changes the fabric of the quiet, picture-perfect town her ancestors founded. Even further, Willie learns that the story her mother had always told her about her father has all been a lie: he wasn't the random man from a free-love commune that Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from this very town.

As Willie puts her archaeological skills to work digging for the truth about her lineage, she discovers that the secrets of her family run deep. Through letters, editorials, and journal entries, the dead rise up to tell their sides of the story as dark mysteries come to light, past and present blur, old stories are finally put to rest, and the shocking truth about more than one monster is revealed.

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