Florida
by Lauren Groff
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FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDWINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE
ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
From the universally acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author of Fates and Furies and Matrix
Florida is a "superlative" book (Boston Globe), "frequently funny" (San Francisco Chronicle), "brooding, inventive and often moving" (NPR Fresh Air) —as Groff is recognized as "Florida's unofficial poet laureate, as Joan Didion was for California." (Washington Post)
In her thrilling new show more book, Lauren Groff brings the reader into a physical world that is at once domestic and wild—a place where the hazards of the natural world lie waiting to pounce, yet the greatest threats and mysteries are still of an emotional, psychological nature. A family retreat can be derailed by a prowling panther, or by a sexual secret. Among those navigating this place are a resourceful pair of abandoned sisters; a lonely boy, grown up; a restless, childless couple, a searching, homeless woman; and an unforgettable, recurring character—a steely and conflicted wife and mother.
The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational center: an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence. Groff transports the reader, then jolts us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty, as she writes about loneliness, rage, family, and the passage of time. With shocking accuracy and effect, she pinpoints the moments and decisions and connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury—the moments that make us alive. Startling, precise, and affecting, Florida is a magnificent achievement. show less
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Some stories that you reread years later present as both familiar and strangely new. Lauren Groff’s stories are often like that. Even if you read one on its initial publication, or came across it republished in a “Best American Short Stories” collection, you will be struck yet again by how eerily right it feels. Even when the adjectives draw you up short and get you to rethink what could have been a tired expression. Even when stories take sudden left turns, or undercut their own narrative drive by giving away something about the protagonist years ahead, or when heavy handed nature steps in to produce fear and trembling that was mostly already present in some shade of depression or hunger. It just works.
Each of the eleven stories show more here have a connection to Florida. Either they are set in that state, or a character is from there though currently abroad. Often the protagonist is from away, typically a northern woman who has married into a Florida family. But nearly everyone in Florida is effectively from away. Only the alligators, snakes, and the rare panther are truly native. Events, relationships, love itself, even the land here is fluid. Indeed land periodically disappears into sink holes or encroaches on former wetlands. It’s sometimes hard to find firm ground.
The majority of the stories are astonishingly good. In particular, I would mention, “The Midnight Zone,” “For the God of Love, for the Love of God,” “Dogs Go Wolf,” and “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners.” But others, such as “Ghosts and Empties,” might be even better. I was struck by “Above and Below,” a story new to me, and also by “Salvador.” But as there were no stories I didn’t enjoy it seems almost churlish to single any out.
Here, as in her novels, Groff displays a nuanced touch with metaphor. Her adjectives sometimes just startle you. It makes her writing a distinct pleasure to read. And easy to recommend. show less
Each of the eleven stories show more here have a connection to Florida. Either they are set in that state, or a character is from there though currently abroad. Often the protagonist is from away, typically a northern woman who has married into a Florida family. But nearly everyone in Florida is effectively from away. Only the alligators, snakes, and the rare panther are truly native. Events, relationships, love itself, even the land here is fluid. Indeed land periodically disappears into sink holes or encroaches on former wetlands. It’s sometimes hard to find firm ground.
The majority of the stories are astonishingly good. In particular, I would mention, “The Midnight Zone,” “For the God of Love, for the Love of God,” “Dogs Go Wolf,” and “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners.” But others, such as “Ghosts and Empties,” might be even better. I was struck by “Above and Below,” a story new to me, and also by “Salvador.” But as there were no stories I didn’t enjoy it seems almost churlish to single any out.
Here, as in her novels, Groff displays a nuanced touch with metaphor. Her adjectives sometimes just startle you. It makes her writing a distinct pleasure to read. And easy to recommend. show less
Even if short stories don't normally interest you, Lauren Groff's collection will leave an impression on your psyche. Each story involves Florida somehow, and its looming presence in each narrative shapes the characters differently. Her narrative voice is excellent, far exceeding most books I've read lately. She will lull you and cut you in the same instant, and you will be flipping ahead to check on the fate of a character you've just met a page ago that suddenly you care very much about. The best of all is that you will find pieces of you, excellently described, scattered through the many characters she creates so well.
Florida has never seemed like a defined, real place to me. My early impressions of it came from my father's Pogo books, and from beautiful yet sinister storm sets in old black and white films. Then came the fight over Elián González, and hanging chads. All very interesting, but not enough to get any sort of cogent idea of the place. Pictures of elderly citizens flooding it annually in winter in their gated communities, along with real floods from hurricanes don't help.
I knew Lauren Groff's name from positive reviews on LT, so when I saw this beautiful looking book in the store, I picked it up. The glorious beast on the cover positively shimmered. The Washington Post blurb on the back cover told me that Groff "stakes her claim to being show more Florida's unofficial poet laureate, as Joan Didion was for California". Well, if she could write like Joan Didion, I had to read her.
There are eleven stories here, of which nine take place in Florida. While each centres around people, it is Florida that is the real protagonist. Unpredictable, menacing, there is a real sense of danger, whether in town or in the country. Feral cats, mould, rot, insects, sinkholes, torrential rain, wind, snakes, not to mention alligators: all can damage the soul as well as the body. Being alone turns to debilitating loneliness:
In another story, "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners", a deaf man out rowing loses his oars and drifts helplessly.
Abandonment is a theme in this collection. Buildings, careers, friends, partners, parents, even children, are left behind. In the final story, "Yport", Florida itself is left behind as a woman flees summer there to research a novel about Guy de Maupassant. Normandy is a complete contrast to Florida. Even though her two children are with her, loneliness still haunts her. In the end she realizes, Solitude is danger for a working mind. We need to keep around us people who think and speak.
When we are lonely for a long time, we people the void with phantoms. Although she adds de Maupassant said this in "Le Horla", perhaps this is Groff's message. In Florida, the phantoms are all too real.
As for me, Florida remains just as unknowable. show less
I knew Lauren Groff's name from positive reviews on LT, so when I saw this beautiful looking book in the store, I picked it up. The glorious beast on the cover positively shimmered. The Washington Post blurb on the back cover told me that Groff "stakes her claim to being show more Florida's unofficial poet laureate, as Joan Didion was for California". Well, if she could write like Joan Didion, I had to read her.
There are eleven stories here, of which nine take place in Florida. While each centres around people, it is Florida that is the real protagonist. Unpredictable, menacing, there is a real sense of danger, whether in town or in the country. Feral cats, mould, rot, insects, sinkholes, torrential rain, wind, snakes, not to mention alligators: all can damage the soul as well as the body. Being alone turns to debilitating loneliness:
And now she is crying..
I'm not crying, she tells the dog, but the dog sighs deeply.
The dog needs to take a little break from her.
The dog stands and goes inside and crawls under the baby grand piano that she bought long ago from a lonely old lady, a piano that nobody plays.
A lonely old piano.
She always wanted to be the kind of person who could play the "Moonlight Sonata".
She buries her failure in this, as she buries all her failures in reading.
In another story, "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners", a deaf man out rowing loses his oars and drifts helplessly.
The water thickly hid its danger, but he knew what was there. There were alligators, their knobby eyes even now watching him. He'd seen one with his binoculars from his bedroom the other day that was at least fourteen feet long. He felt it somewhere nearby now. And though this was no longer prairie, there were still a few snakes, cottonmouth, copperheads, pygmies under the leaf rot at the edge of the lake. There was the water itself, superheated until it hosted flagellates that enter the nose and infect the brain, an infinity of the minuscule eating away. There was the burning sun above and the mosquitoes feeding on his blood. There was the silence. He wouldn't swim in this terrifying mess.
Abandonment is a theme in this collection. Buildings, careers, friends, partners, parents, even children, are left behind. In the final story, "Yport", Florida itself is left behind as a woman flees summer there to research a novel about Guy de Maupassant. Normandy is a complete contrast to Florida. Even though her two children are with her, loneliness still haunts her. In the end she realizes, Solitude is danger for a working mind. We need to keep around us people who think and speak.
When we are lonely for a long time, we people the void with phantoms. Although she adds de Maupassant said this in "Le Horla", perhaps this is Groff's message. In Florida, the phantoms are all too real.
As for me, Florida remains just as unknowable. show less
I've always liked Lauren Groff's novels, but not loved them, but I did love her collection of short stories, Florida. The stories here are bleak and largely unhappy, ironic for a collection largely set in the Sunshine State. In many of the stories, the protagonist is a white woman, with a few young children and a patient husband, and the action in the stories is largely quotidian; she takes walks, she feeds her children, she feels melancholic about the state of things. Really, these stories should be self-indulgent and boring. But in Groff's hands, and more specifically, in her words, the stories are so well told, the details so precisely laid out, that the stories ended up being just about perfect.
“Florida is mold, feral cats, snakes, bugs, humidity, rot, spanish moss, vines, gators, sinkholes, homelessness, tent cities, termites, mosquitos, hurricanes, lizards, panthers, "a damp and dense tangle," bleaching sun, dread and heat...”
“What had been built to seem so solid was fragile in the face of time because time is impassive, more animal than human. Time would not care if you fell out of it. It would continue on without you.”
Reading through this collection of stories, it quickly becomes clear that Groff has conflicted feelings about the Sunshine State, her current state of residence. These are dark tales, mostly set in Florida, with women or children dealing with difficult issues and trying to face down personal or show more natural threats.
Not every story sings, but most do and the writing is uniformly strong and well-paced. If you have not read Groff, this might be a good place to start. show less
“What had been built to seem so solid was fragile in the face of time because time is impassive, more animal than human. Time would not care if you fell out of it. It would continue on without you.”
Reading through this collection of stories, it quickly becomes clear that Groff has conflicted feelings about the Sunshine State, her current state of residence. These are dark tales, mostly set in Florida, with women or children dealing with difficult issues and trying to face down personal or show more natural threats.
Not every story sings, but most do and the writing is uniformly strong and well-paced. If you have not read Groff, this might be a good place to start. show less
I would give this collection of short stories 6 stars if I could. Lauren Groff's voice is impeccable. Her characters are rich and engaging and real and her descriptions of the landscape are vivid and poetic. I kept rereading passages just to savor the flow of the words and the brilliance of her images and metaphors. Groff explores themes of fear, loneliness, courage, and love with empathy but also with unflinching honesty. Storms play a large role in her stories, each of which is either set or anchored in the swampy, humid, bug- and snake-infested palmetto and oak hummocks of central Florida. Some of the storms are near hurricanes, some are simply the drama of family life. Alternating stories center on an unnamed mother of two young show more sons, a cynical and almost-bitter woman who continues to try to find a sense of belonging and hope, for her beloved boys if not for herself. This thread of connectivity running through the series of stories provides an unusual and satisfying grounding for the reader.
I grew up in the part of Florida where Groff sets her characters and, while she perhaps ignores some of the more charming aspects of the area, she nonetheless captures its cultural and environmental nuances. I simply loved this collection. Absolutely recommended. show less
I grew up in the part of Florida where Groff sets her characters and, while she perhaps ignores some of the more charming aspects of the area, she nonetheless captures its cultural and environmental nuances. I simply loved this collection. Absolutely recommended. show less
Good but not knock-my-socks-off good, partly because the tone was so similar throughout—an explicit, existential dread that derives from being a woman, a mother, a wife, a Floridian, with guest appearances by snakes, hurricanes, and that SOB (apparently) Guy de Maupassant. The writing is strong, but I would have liked to see Groff use her powers to conjure up a little more variety within the collection, even a themed one. I will say, though, she does a damn good job writing about mother love for small boys.
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Author Information
34+ Works 15,043 Members
Lauren Groff graduated from Amherst College and received an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her books include The Monsters of Templeton, Delicate Edible Birds, and Fates and Furies. Arcadia won of the Medici Book Club Prize. Her fiction has also won the Paul Bowles Prize for Fiction, the PEN/O. Henry Award, and the show more Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines including the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Tin House, One Story, McSweeney's, and Ploughshares, and in the anthologies 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and three editions of the Best American Short Stories. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Original publication date
- 2018
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- Florida, USA; France
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