The Monsters of Templeton

Starred review from November 26, 2007
At the start of Groff’s lyrical debut, 28-year-old Wilhelmina “Willie” Upton returns to her picturesque hometown of Templeton, N.Y., after a disastrous affair with her graduate school professor during an archeological dig in Alaska. In Templeton, Willie’s shocked to find that her once-bohemian mother, Vi, has found religion. Vi also reveals to Willie that her father wasn’t a nameless hippie from Vi’s commune days, but a man living in Templeton. With only the scantiest of clues from Vi, Willie is determined to untangle the roots of the town’s greatest families and discover her father’s identity. Brilliantly incorporating accounts from generations of Templetonians—as well as characters “borrowed” from the works of James Fenimore Cooper, who named an upstate New York town “Templeton” in The Pioneers
—Groff paints a rich picture of Willie’s current predicaments and those of her ancestors. Readers will delight in Willie’s sharp wit and Groff’s creation of an entire world, complete with a lake monster and illegitimate children.

March 31, 2008
Groff's tale of a young woman searching for her true identity through old letters, journals and articles is a vivid portrait of the past and present, but Nicole Roberts's delivery is far too stolid and contrived to bring the material to life. As if reading a teleprompter, Roberts sounds more like a news anchor, slightly disconnected from the material and doing her best to make it sound important. At times she races through the story at breakneck pace, at others she reads painfully slow as if reading to a group of uninterested first graders. While her pitch is clear, her tone is almost plastic and fake, making the story so dreary and unimaginative that most listeners will be immediately turned off. Simultaneous release with the Hyperion hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 26, 2007).