Brawler is a collection of nine short stories and is further evidence of Lauren Groff’s extraordinary talent. While all the stories are set in the USA, they range from east to west coasts, and cover from the mid-20th century to the present day. A consistent sensibility is the unquiet distillation of psychological tension, as seen symbolically through characters as a ‘wind that is dark and ceaseless and raging within’.
That quote comes from the lead story and relates to the escape of a mother and her children from an abusive relationship. The second story follows a recently retired wife who is prompted by her husband to find passion to fill her empty days. ‘To Sunland’ tells of a sister having to place her disabled brother into an institution, weighing up the freedom and guilt involved. The fighting implied in the titular story is off-page and underlies the story of a school-age diver whose mother is increasingly incapacitated.
The longest story, ‘What’s the Time, Mr Wolf?’, eviscerates class and gender divides. ‘Under the Wave’ is a disturbing eco-disaster story, invoking an ambiguity also evident in ‘Such Small Islands’, where a young girl has possible life-saving information that she keeps to herself. The final story, ‘Annunciation’, cements the notion of dark and light in these characters: ‘… in every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death’.
Groff has the uncanny ability to instantly create the necessary atmosphere in each story. She also has complete control over narrative voice – always quiet and understated, making the pathos of the subject matter even more compelling. Groff’s incomparable talent sets her apart as a writer of short stories.
Reviewed by Bob Moore.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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 and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2024 she was named one of the “TIME 100 most influential people.” Groff ’s 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, where she and her husband run an independent bookstore, The Lynx.
0 Comments