Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton

I just finished Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton, a book selected for my other book group. Interestingly, it takes plan in a town modeled on Cooperstown and features a character modeled on James Fenimore Cooper, as well as characters from Cooper's novels. In some ways, this broad narrative of one family's history is very much linked with this American Experience the Swat Book Group has decided to take on.

Let me explain.

Archaeologist Wilhemina "Wille" Upton returns to her hometown of Templeton, NY, birthplace of the game of baseball and the hall of fame, pregnant, disgraced, and an emotional wreck. Her mother Vi, formerly a 60's hippie who reveled in Willie's birth as a "love child", is now a devout Christian, much to Willie's surprise. Vi still lives in the family homestead, Temple Manor, which is perched above Lake Glimmerglass. One the day of her arrival, Willie learns that the lake's supposedly-mythical monster—Glimmey, to the locals—has surfaced and died. Amid all the media hoopla and national attention, Willie desperately is trying to find her bearings. Vi sets her the goal of discovering the identity of her real father, plunging Willie into the town's strange and storied history. Multiple narrators fill the book, from the town's founder, Marmaduke Temple, to the Runnings Buds (Willie's self-proclaimed cheerleading squad and protectors, who spend every morning running around town), to assorted family crazies like Cinnamon Averell, Remarkable Prettybones, Noname, and Sagamore—even Glimmey her/himself at the end.

A vast, sprawling novel, The Monsters of Templeton is not without charm and intrigue. Mysteries abound—murder, arson, incest, rape, betrayal, ghosts, and more. But it's easy to find oneself lost in all the name and all the history of the town, like thrashing around in the depths of Lake Glimmerglass itself. I'm not sure what all the ghosts and even the monster signify; are they protectors, accompanying Willie and the town's inhabitants through the murky waters of their lives, or are they haunting images, responsive to people's baser instincts like lust, greed, and betrayal? It's hard to say. Ghosts pop up throughout the novel, leading characters to strange realizations and actions, guiding their hands and their eyes to see what is hidden in plain sight.

There are times when the novel is incredibly evocative—the chapters in the dark woods of the early days in Templeton remind me of the backwoods scenes in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom which we read this past spring. But the narration here is uneven and, at times, stretches credulity. Some of Groff's narrators sound alike, despite differences in age, gender, class, and race. And the story meanders along between generations and time so much that it's sometimes hard to get a foothold on where everything is heading. Of course, this ambivalence is also reflected in Willie's ambivalence toward everyone she meets in town, from old crushes, to the fallen cheerleaders and risen former fat boys of high school. She's not sure why she is there and if she likes the place, having tried so hard to leave it all behind for her glamorous life in academia.

But these are small quibbles to have with such a fun novel. I enjoyed the play between the real and the fictional, and between the really fictional (in Cooper's books) and the really real (Cooperstown the town). Groff is a talented writer and I'll be sure to look for her next book.