Florida

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MATRIX and FATES AND FURIES'Magnificent . . . Lauren Groff is a virtuoso' Emily St John Mandel'A blistering collection . . . lyrical and oblique' Guardian'Not to be missed . . . deep and dark and resonant' Ann Patchett'It's beautiful. It's giving me rich, grand nightmares' ObserverIn these vigorous stories, Lauren Groff brings her electric storytelling to a world in which storms, snakes and sinkholes lurk at the edge of everyday life, but the greater threats 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 conflicted wife and mother.Florida is an exploration of the connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury.'Innovative and terrifyingly relevant. Any one of these stories is a bracing read; together they form a masterpiece' Stylist'Lushly evocative . . . mesmerising . . . a writer whose turn of phrase can stop you on your tracks' Financial Times

“Florida is a magnificent collection , executed with tremendous depth and precision , unsettling in the best possible way . Lauren Groff is a virtuoso .”

Florida is a magnificent collection, executed with tremendous depth and precision, unsettling in the best possible way. Lauren Groff is a virtuoso.
Don’t tell yourself you don’t like short stories, because these are not to be missed. The book is deep and dark and resonant. Every story plays in some way on the others and in the end the total is worth even more than the sum of its beautiful parts.
It’s beautiful. It’s giving me rich, grand nightmares. Observer
Florida feels innovative and terribly relevant. Any one of its stories is a bracing read; together they form a masterpiece. Stylist
This is what she shows in story after story: a heroic pushback against the way we live now, against waste, against the artificial environments in which we find ourselves maintained by corporations, but equally against the pressures on women to be flawless, effortlessly excellent mothers, wives, sisters, lovers, friends, within this dire state of affairs … Groff’s lyrical and oblique stories catch these women in the midst of becoming aware of their complicity in perpetuating these narratives – to which their response is to walk, flee, or conversely refuse to budge, as in the dazzlingly apocalyptic ‘Eyewall’ … The hot, humid Floridian atmosphere hangs over all the stories … Every woman, every snake, is fighting back against the laws of nature, and the human-made Eden that threatens to imprison, or end, them all. Guardian
A lushly evocative collection of stories about the Sunshine State, its inhabitants and its history … Mesmerising … In her previous book, Fates and Furies — which was picked by Barack Obama as his favourite read of 2015 — Groff painted a psychologically rich portrait of a marriage as told from both sides. She brings the same attention to detail to Florida, in a multifaceted portrayal of both the state and its inhabitants … The Florida winter wraps itself around “camellias and peach trees and dogwoods and oranges”, but it is the summer she captures so well … She’s a writer whose turn of phrase can stop you in your tracks … 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
The collection testifies to Groff’s brilliance as a writer of both places and people. She grapples with interpersonal relations and the inner lives of others with perceptiveness, wit and emotional engagement. Literary Review
Easily the year’s best story collection . . . these indelibly vivid tales read like inoculations against cynicism. Vogue
She is an example of writers who can do everything – dialogue, structure, the throb and hum of inner life – so brilliantly. The result is so heady and evocative, you’ll be wafting away imaginary heat waves and checking your room for scaly threats as you read, while Florida’s cast of lost, sad and sometimes cruel characters will stick with you far longer. Esquire UK
An unsettling, stinging collection that feeds on Florida’s paradoxes. Sunday Times

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of four novels, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies and Matrix, and two short story collections, Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize and been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and elsewhere, and she was named one of Granta's 2017 Best Young American Novelists.

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