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It might
be easy to categorize Lauren Groff's debut novel, The Monsters
of Templeton, as chick lit with literary pretensions.
After all, the main character, Willie Upton, returns to her
hometown in self-imposed exile, disgraced and unsure how to
find redemption. Willie's single mother has issues. Her best
friend has issues. Men are generally cads, jerks, comic foils
not to be taken seriously, or manipulative bastards—or,
at best, they move through the world oblivious to nearly everything
around them. There's lots of soul searching, lots of feminine
empowerment, lots of women-know-best-wink-wink, nudge-nudge,
don't-we-sisters?
But Groff's
novel is nearly perfect in every way. The writing, the characters,
and the insights into life all feel full and fully realized.
The Monsters of Templeton is a rich, wonderfully readable
literary achievement.
Templeton
is a not-so-thinly veiled version of Cooperstown, New York,
complete with a baseball museum, a national literary icon,
the state historical society, and a deep glacial lake—Lake
Glimmerglass—that forms the headwaters of the Susquehanna
River. The lake, mysterious, ubiquitous, and apparently bottomless,
is home to a lake monster—think the Loch Ness Monster
but in upstate New York—which bobs dead to the surface
on the same morning Willie returns to town.
While
the novel does not center on the monster, the monster is very
much an integral part of the town's character and mythos.
Templeton is well-situated in the landscape of magical realism,
which gives the entire story an undercurrent of possibility
and wonder. But The Monsters of Templeton is much more concerned
with ghosts and skeletons in closets than monsters. As if
her shambled life isn't enough to handle, Willie discovers
on her return home that her mother is turning into a different
person and has a life-long secret she has been hiding from
her daughter.
Willie
spends the rest of the book trying to uncover her mother's
secret, a quest that takes her back through the generations
of her family all the way to the founding of the town. The
women, and some of the men, whom she meets in those historical
jaunts provide a colorful cast of supporting characters that
shed light on Willie's own quest. Groff gives those voices
from the past ample opportunity to speak on their own—and
they have secrets to tell.
At times,
Willie displays the smug self-absorption of a late-twenty-something
member of Gen Y who has gotten too cosmopolitan for her small
hometown. She's hard to live with on the page when she gets
that way, but her crappy attitude never last too long before
her underlying vulnerability or ability to laugh at herself
and the world come into play. For good or bad, Willie actually
makes for excellent company.
Templeton,
as it turns out, isn't such a bad place after all, despite
its secrets and skeletons and dead lake monsters. It's a place
where all sorts of things are possible—like redemption,
for instance. But don't expect The Monsters of Templeton
to follow conventions, and don't expect Groff to be categorized
easily. Her smart, sometimes sassy writing defies easy classification
even as it dazzles. Groff has breathed a little magic into
her milieu, making it a pleasure to get lost in every page.
(June,
2008)
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