Lauren Groff's Florida Stories

Lauren Groff became the reviewers' darling after her successful novels "The Monsters of Templeton," and "Fates and Furies," came out. I read them both and I'm here to tell you that her collection of short stories, which will be published the first week of June, rise above her previous work. And I don't even like short stories! I reviewed this collection for my radio program at my local NPR station http://news.wgcu.org/programs/florida-book-page  but it won't likely be aired until the fall. I can't let you wait that long to be made aware of these powerful stories. Here's a reduced version of my opinion.

Lauren Groff’s Florida is not the world of Disney princesses or performing whales that most folks associate with the sunshine state. No, Groff’s Florida is a borderline dangerous place where racial tensions run high, homelessness is rampant, and women and children are often imperiled. Humidity seeps into everything. Snakes, gators, and ants populate old cracker homes in the north Florida swamps where air conditioning is only for the wealthy. The atmosphere in these stories is as heavy and dank as the air.

But this is not a criticism. In fact, Groff’s words are luminous. Her characters are complex, often lonely, like Jude whose mother deserted him and his father in order to save her sanity. Back in Boston she owns a bookstore but by the time Jude finds her, his mother’s smothering need to atone for her absence drives him away.

Then there are the two sisters left alone during a storm in an old fishing camp. Before long the generator dies. Without food they resort to eating a chap stick they find in a drawer. They brave the saw palmetto scrub until they find a pond from which they draw water for boiling. The older sister is resourceful and clever. She reads to the little one, keeping her safe for as long as she can.

Most powerful of all are the personal essays that bookend this collection, each reflecting the stream of consciousness ruminations of the author, a wife who eschews the traditional role, and mother of two boys who fill her with love but also with the desire for escape. At night she runs through her neighborhood, burning off her anger at the present state of the world, fearful of the future her boys will face, and resentful of the partner who sleeps undisturbed through her nocturnal wanderings.

In the final story this same woman flees Florida’s summer steam and storms for the Normandy beach town of Yport, ostensibly to research Guy de Maupassant, but hoping to rekindle her collegiate love of all things French and instill it in her boys.

Painfully honest, deeply disturbing, sometimes redemptive, this collection of stories should be savored slowly, allowing Groff’s painterly language to awaken all your senses. You will be able to see, smell, hear, and almost taste the Florida she evokes with her words.