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Book Summary and Reviews of Florida by Lauren Groff

Florida by Lauren Groff

Florida

by Lauren Groff

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  • Jun 2018, 288 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The bold new book from the celebrated New York Times-bestselling author of Fates and Furies.

In her vigorous and moving new book, Lauren Groff brings her electric storytelling and intelligence to a world in which storms, snakes, and sinkholes lurk at the edge of everyday life, but the greater threats and mysteries are of a human, emotional, and psychological nature. Among those navigating it all 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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. A literary tour de force of precariousness set in a blistering place, a state shaped like a gun." – Kirkus

"Groff's descriptions shimmer with precision...Groff's skillful prose, self-awareness, and dark humor leaven the bleakness, making this a consistently rewarding collection." - Publishers Weekly

"With sympathy for her characters and a keen sensitivity to the natural world, Groff gets readers wondering who or what will triumph or succumb." - Booklist

"Well-observed, unexpected writing for fans and more." – Library Journal

This information about Florida was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Cathryn Conroy

An Extraordinary, Emotionally Intense Collection of Stories
Lauren Groff is an artist. But instead of a paintbrush she uses words, and she does it with such amazing talent that those disparate syllables and sentences come together to create daring, brilliant images of Florida (and other places) in this collection of imaginative and often heartbreaking short stories. Because of her word artistry I saw the black snakes slithering in the swampy land. I could almost touch the Spanish moss hanging from the trees in dense clusters. I feared the alligators beneath the placid, shimmering water. I scratched at nonexistent mosquito bites. I felt the force of a hurricane's ravaging winds and dangerous, destructive floods.

Each story is about both the external and the internal. The external is the raw brutality of nature in this swampy state. The internal is the human heart—be it good or evil, happy or enraged, beautiful or ugly. This is as much a story about the human state as it is the sunshine state.

But be forewarned: Each of these stories is intense, much like little emotional explosions—so much so that I could only read one at a time and then had to close the book for a while before starting the next one. And that speaks to the power of the writing and the subsequent need for contemplation.

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Author Information

Lauren Groff Author Biography

Photo: Lucy Schaeffer

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and The New York Times–bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies' Choice Award, France's Grand Prix de l'Héroïne, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

Author Interview
Link to Lauren Groff's Website

Name Pronunciation
Lauren Groff: "Groff" rhymes with "off."

Other books by Lauren Groff at BookBrowse
  • The Monsters of Templeton jacket
  • Matrix jacket

6 more...

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