04/09/2018
Ferocious weather and self-destructive impulses plague the characters in this assured collection, the first from Groff (Fates and Furies) since 2009’s Delicate Edible Birds. In “Above and Below,” a grad student loses her university funding and spirals into homelessness. The solo vacationer in “Salvador”—one of three stories set outside Florida—waits out a raging storm with a menacing shopkeeper who, after the harrowing night, “smelled of wet denim and sweated-out alcohol and sour private skin.” Groff’s descriptions shimmer with precision: in “Eyewall,” at the onset of a hurricane that a hallucinating woman endures alone, “the lake goosebumped” and “the house sucked in a shuddery breath.” On a family getaway to a cheerless cabin in the claustrophobic “The Midnight Zone,” a woman notes “how the screens at night pulsed with the tender bellies of lizards.” That story is one of five to feature an unnamed fretful mother and novelist who, in “Yport,” has dragged her two young sons to France while she researches Guy de Maupassant. “Their world is so full of beauty,” she says, fearing for the boys’ future, “the last terrible flash of beauty before the darkness.” A number of the stories hit similar tonal notes (pessimism threatens to sink a few of them), but Groff’s skillful prose, self-awareness, and dark humor leaven the bleakness, making this a consistently rewarding collection. (June)

Praise for Florida: 

"Lauren Groff is a great storyteller . . . Florida is restorative fiction for these urgent times. Its final gestures, even the most ominous . . . lean toward love and the promise of good people, in not just this state but the world." – New York Times
 
"Something untameable lurks restlessly beneath the surface of this book. Groff’s incomparable prose pulsates with peril; its beauty, like that of the titular state itself, lies in a certain wild lushness." – Financial Times

"These new stories are tight and contained, and they pulse with menace and feral energy." – Wall Street Journal
 
"Florida is a gift to writers. . . . There is more than a little of David Lynch in Ms Groff’s Floridian landscape: exotic and bright, yet pulsing with hidden malevolence . . . Ms Groff’s writing is marvelous, her insights keen, each story a glittering, encrusted treasure hauled from the deep." – The Economist

"Haunting and arresting." – New York Times Book Review

"As fine and beautifully crafted as any fiction she has written . . . . . [Groff] is one of the best writers in the United States, and her prize-winning stories reverberate long after they are read. In past years, the rare short story collection . . . has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Florida should be in the running next year." – LA Review of Books
 
"Groff throws open the windows and turns off the A/C, mosquitoes and heatstroke be damned . . . Groff’s Florida may do the same thing for its readers: surprise and menace us, fascinate and sometimes frighten us, and leave the whole world fuller than it was before." – Slate 
 
"Masterful. . . Amid the horror, wonder perseveres." – Esquire  

"The gems here are like the Florida Keys: distinct islands, each beautiful in its own way. Meet a lonely runner, two lost sisters and a son growing up without his mother. Prepare to sweat, see snakes and get lost in a swamp. Groff’s depictions aren’t always pretty, but they’ll keep you turning the pages—and not just for the breeze." – People Magazine

"[A] transcendent writer. . . [Florida] isn’t a short-story collection so much as an ecosystem." –The Atlantic

"[Groff] stakes her claim to being Florida's unofficial poet laureate, as Joan Didion was for California."—Washington Post

"Superlative collection — seriously, there’s not a dud in the bunch ... Groff is an extra terrific writer, as ever...Having followed an astonishing, astonishingly accessible novel with such an outstanding, accessible collection, Groff is surely poised to topple the tiny monkeys in charge of deciding that the perceived realm of the feminine isn’t sufficiently deep." – Boston Globe

"Taken together, the stories have the feel of autobiography, although, as in a Salvador Dali painting, their emotional disclosures are encrypted in phantasmagoria . . . The sentences indigenous to Florida are gorgeously weird and limber . . ." – The New Yorker

"The landscapes in the short stories are silty, rich, sun-bleached, cold as stone. They are strong characters of their own that will not be ignored." – Electric Literature
 
"Impossible to put down." – Vox

"Groff’s mythic almost gothic stories about Florida and domesticity and entrapment took me right back to the Brontë sisters . . . Masterfully made." – LitHub

"You’re helpless to the power — the sheer virtuosity — of Groff’s evocative prose." – Entertainment Weekly
 
"Groff is still on-brand. Her writing about relationships rarely sticks within the narrow, Updike-ian confines of domestic dysfunction, though. Even in short stories, she prefers broader canvases, and much of Florida is filled with hurricanes and other violent storms that run parallel to the personal crises she describes . . . Straightforward but moody and metaphorical — magical realism without the sparkle and sense of wonder." – Los Angeles Times

"Groff’s Florida is touched by sublimity. It is an ‘Eden of beautiful things,’ glorious and decayed, attacked and altering." – The Rumpus

"[The stories] overflow with imagery so powerfully tangible that it’s hard to believe the humidity and rainstorms aren’t truly escaping from the page to touch you . . ." – Chicago Review of Books
 
"Florida gives off strong vibes of magical realism, where snakes, sinkholes and panthers in hidden Florida towns replace Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Macondo with its yellow butterflies and ghosts." – Palm Beach Post

"Brooding, inventive and often moving short stories . . .  In Groff's trademark zigzagging storytelling style, revelations ricochet between pages — and sometimes even within single sentences . . . Groff, through her own acrobatic style, attests to the benefits of a firm grounding in grammar and vocabulary. Lots of things go south fast in the stories collected in Florida — like marriages, careers and the weather — but throughout, Groff's gifts as a writer just keep soaring higher and higher." – NPR Fresh Air

"Groff’s desire seems to be to show — in a frequently funny, sometimes painful and always deeply sensitive way — that women and children are often stronger than we tend to think, and that the Earth is more fragile than we usually allow ourselves to understand." – San Francisco Chronicle

"Easily the year’s best story collection . . . these indelibly vivid tales read like inoculations against cynicism." – Vogue

"[The stories] take on an inexplicably cohesive form with a sad-, beautiful- and naked-ness that reverberates in the mind long after the book is shut." – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution  
 
"She hasn't lost a step since Fates And Furies . . . Groff's language is, as always, gorgeous and precise. Her ability to map the inner contours of characters who seem to exist entirely in extremis — and, almost entirely, within a fragile shell of feigned competence and normalcy — is remarkable. Her Florida is a frightening place that bends (solely through the eyes and experiences of her characters) into a discomfortingly modern Southern Gothic tradition. Her stories — all of them — are haunted." – NPR Books
 
"Slime mold, a father killed by snake venom, a mother haunted by a deadly panther, and half-feral little girls abandoned on an island—these bizarre happenings could be set only in the Sunshine State, and be written only by Groff, the Gabriel García Márquez of Gainesville. Reading as required as insect repellent in a swamp." – O Magazine
 
"Groff has grasped the true grotesqueness of Florida, an ‘Eden of dangerous things’ spliced with stinking bodies, living and dead. In her hands, Florida as state and state-of-mind becomes an alembic, cohering these discrete stories as perfectly as if they were written in one sitting . . . Florida is so much, perhaps too much. Florida is just enough . . . Groff’s powers transform that glut of vitality into something startlingly precarious and, even to a forsworn Floridian like me, something startling and precious." – The Millions
 
"[Florida] evinces a deep comprehension and appreciation of the wildness that reaches from the state’s swamps and forests to inform even the most developed pockets of civilization. Life cannot be tamed here, Groff suggests, and the characters . . . feel the state’s inexorable, unsettling pull. The book is no less difficult to resist." – South Florida
 
"Subversive, but quietly; it captures what’s mysterious about the inevitable, what’s bizarre about the inescapable . . . these narratives of young families, divorced couples, and unconventional women vibrate with something new . . . The rains in Florida are biblical to say the least. The margins between earthen and celestial routinely dissolve . . . Florida suggest that the relationship between humans and our planet—that home none of us chose—transcends the power struggle of dominance and submission." – The Paris Review
 
"Masterful . . . Groff’s writing is stripped down and honed, with few extraneous words. She experiments with form without veering into gimmick or forsaking the power of language, which she expertly wields." – am New York
 
"A weird, spooky love letter to Florida, by one of Obama’s favorite writers . . . Groff’s detailed descriptions are transportive; you feel like you’re there in the dank cabin or in the eye of the hurricane . . . And don't get us started on the snakes. Florida, man." – PureWow
 
"This collection of 11 stories . . . speak to each other not in the light of the Sunshine State, but in the shadows. Groff’s world is a dark, strange one of tempests and terrors. Her characters . . . fall into loneliness and self-ruin at each turn." – Town & Country Magazine
 
"Florida mesmerizes and unnerves." – Business Insider
 
"A humid closeness that makes every twist of fate and new character feel intimately familiar . . . Each tale contains Groff's signature mixture of poetic beauty and visceral poignancy." – Harper’s Bazaar
 
"As much plot and detail packed into. . .15 pages as you'll find in many novels. . . The whole world is Florida, paradise because it’s dangerous and dangerous because it’s paradise." – Tampa Bay

"Filled with the mesmerizing, decadent language . . . the titular state looms as a setting of lush beauty and swift menace . . . Groff's storytelling has such ferocious energy."– Star Tribune
 
"We would probably give a five-star review to Lauren Groff’s grocery list. Her language is beautiful, surprising, and always unfolding. Florida is a visceral story collection . . . told through a series of rich, layered characters . . . It’s as if you’re eavesdropping the whole time, peering in on lives vastly different from and yet so familiar to your own."– GOOP
 
"If Barack Obama found time as president to read Fates and Furies, Groff’s third novel, you can clear a weekend this summer to read her follow-up. Florida is a blistering series of short stories set in a state where calm and intensity work hand in hand." – Conde Nast Traveler
 
"Groff sidesteps Miami glitter for the sticky, snake-thick subtropics, the swamps and summer heat giving birth to an electrifying array of characters and worlds." –Vanity Fair 
 
"Readers can practically feel the mosquitoes buzzing at their necks in stories Ms. Groff started writing a decade ago after moving to Florida . . . In her stories, predators bite, hurricanes destroy and nature does not forgive." –Wall Street Journal
 
"A dangerous energy, buoyed by rich and unsettling details, run through the Fates and Furies author’s new collection as her characters face down snakes, hurricanes and their own self-destructive behavior." –Time Magazine
 
"Think of the stories in Lauren Groff's collection Florida as gems. You'll want to revisit them over and over, and see how you'll react to them under different circumstances, different slants of light. But on a more basic level: Each story is exquisite." –Refinery29

"Groff moves adroitly through an impressive range of lives, times, and places...The book stages an intriguing relationship between the individual and the collective." –Harper's Magazine

"Groff fans will recognize the descriptive zest instantly. . . raw, danger-riddled, linguistically potent pieces. They unsettle their readers at every pass . . . A literary tour de force of precariousness set in a blistering place, a state shaped like a gun." –Kirkus, starred review

03/01/2018
A frank, rambunctious, generous writer, Groff thought big in her much-heralded novel Fates and Furies. Here, in spot-on language, she effectively provides slice-of-life reading, capturing the scents and sounds of her newly adopted state, Florida. Her portraits aren't of sand, surf, and sunshine; instead, she shows us houses that "rot and droop" in the humidity, the "devilish reek of snakes" at swamp's edge, and an "old hunting camp shipwrecked in twenty miles of scrub" where a panther lurks. But these portraits aren't unaffectionate, and the characters can be satisfyingly tough, though Groff's alter ego in several stories is still getting her bearings. In the opening story, she walks nightly in her transitional neighborhood, seeing few people but keeping herself from becoming a yowling mom. The standout "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" traces a Florida boy's life from his rough upbringing, his mother's stealing him away to safety, his father's grabbing him back, and his adulthood in the family home, when he confronts the ghost of his let-down father, then joyously greets his wife. VERDICT Well-observed, unexpected writing for fans and more. [See Prepub Alert, 12/11/17.]

Groff's Sunshine State features no amusement park. While each story in this collection is richly told, the subject matter is often dark, tense, dangerous. It seems the state itself is safe for no one—not children or their mothers, a father, or man's best friend. That said, Groff's words and performance make this an irresistible listen. She is warm while matter-of-fact and gentle as she shares tales of deprivation and isolation. Her voice seems to love her protagonists just as her pen puts them through trials and torment. The common touch of her narration matches the layers contained in each story—what seems simple is actually full of meaning. While this is not a traditional beach read, FLORIDA is worth the trip. L.B.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

★ 2018-03-24
In 11 electric short stories, the gifted Groff (Fates and Furies, 2015, etc.) unpacks the "dread and heat" of her home state.In her first fiction since President Barack Obama named Fates and Furies his favorite book of the year, Groff collects her singing, stinging stories of foreboding and strangeness in the Sunshine State. Groff lives in Gainesville with a husband and two sons, and four of these tales are told from the perspectives of unmoored married mothers of young ones. The first, "Ghosts and Empties," which appeared in the New Yorker, begins with the line, "I have somehow become a woman who yells," a disposition the narrator tries to quell by walking at all hours as "the neighbors' lives reveal themselves, the lit windows domestic aquariums." Groff fans will recognize the descriptive zest instantly. The same quasi-hapless mother seems to narrate "The Midnight Zone," in which she imperils the lives of her boys by falling off a stool and hitting her head while alone with them at a remote cabin, "where one thing [she] liked was how the screens at night pulsed with the tender bellies of lizards." Ditto for the lonely oddballs telling "Flower Hunters" and "Yport," the longest and last story, in which the reckless mother is often coated in alcohol. These are raw, danger-riddled, linguistically potent pieces. They unsettle their readers at every pass. In the dreamy, terrific "Dogs Go Wolf," two little girls are abandoned on an island, their starvation lyrical: "The older sister's body was made of air. She was a balloon, skidding over the ground"; their rescue is akin to a fairy tale. Equally mesmerizing is "Above and Below," in which the graduate student narrator sinks away and dissipates into vivid, exacting homelessness. Even the few stories that dribble off rather than end, such as "For the God of Love, For the Love of God," have passages of surpassing beauty. And Groff gets the humid, pervasive white racism that isn't her point but curdles through plenty of her characters.A literary tour de force of precariousness set in a blistering place, a state shaped like a gun.