The Monsters of Templeton

The Monsters of Templeton is Lauren Groff’s debut novel, published in 2008 before the books that would establish her as one of the strongest American literary voices of her generation. Set in the fictional town of Templeton, New York, modeled closely on Cooperstown where Groff grew up, the novel weaves together the present day story of Willie Upton with a multigenerational history of the town’s founding family.

Willie returns to Templeton in disgrace, having ended an affair with her married archaeology professor in spectacularly bad fashion. Her hippie mother, who has recently found religion, drops a bombshell on her almost immediately. Willie’s father is not the anonymous commune member Vi has always claimed. He is someone from Templeton, and Vi will not say who. While Willie tries to figure out the puzzle, the body of a giant, ancient lake monster surfaces in Lake Glimmerglass, the same lake that has held its secret for the entire history of the town.

Groff alternates between Willie’s contemporary detective work and chapters narrated by various ancestors going back to the founding of Templeton in the eighteenth century. The historical voices are pastiches of different periods, journals, letters, fragments of memoir, and the result is a novel that reads like an excavation. The James Fenimore Cooper connection is no accident. Cooper grew up in Cooperstown and used it as the basis for Templeton in his Leatherstocking Tales, and Groff plays with that literary inheritance throughout.

For readers who came to Groff through Fates and Furies or Matrix, going back to her debut is a treat. The voice is already there. The patience with structure, the willingness to let a novel be many things at once, the affection for damaged characters. The Monsters of Templeton is an unusually confident first novel from a writer who would only get better.