MADreads

Monsters in the family

September 30th, 2008 Mary K. - Central

Lauren Groff’s first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, begins when Willie Upton returns to her hometown of Templeton on the day the body of a water monster surfaces on the local lake.  Willie, a graduate student, has reluctantly returned home from an archeological dig in Alaska.  She left the dig after an ill-advised and disasterous affair with her major professor.

There have been changes on the homefront.  Her mother Vi, a former hippie, has taken up religion and is having a relationship with her pastor.  Vi has always maintained that Willie’s father was an unidentified man from her commune days, but now she reveals that he is related to the wealthy Templetons and that she knows who he is.  In what is clearly a challenge and a distraction for Willie, Vi tells Willie  that she will never be able to find her father.

Willie takes up her mother’s challenge and a large part of the book describes her research and studies of historical records.  As Willie sorts through the lives of her ancestors, some of them begin to tell their own stories.  Templeton pretty clearly resembles Cooperstown, New York, and Groff also uses characters and settings from James Fennimore Cooper’s novels.

I listened to a downloaded audiobook which is expertly read by Nicole Roberts.  Though her reading adds a lot to the book, I did miss the  photos collected in the book and the slowly expanding family trees.  Even without those extras, this is a well written and clever book.  Groff is very skilled at pulling all the parts together, both historical and contemporary, for a satisfactory ending in this impressive first novel.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction