Lauren Groff is an outstanding short story writer, right in the sweet spot of straightforward effect delivered with awesome craft. It's true that her stories can feel very 'New Yorker', almost invariably zeroing in on significant moments in a life, unspooling from there, and ending on a note that propels forward while also summing up what the story has been about. But another way of thinking about that is as a sign of the consistency and sturdiness of Groff's story-writing - the way they arrive with lightning-flash vividness without any notable stylistic tics or gimmicks. And another way of saying that could be to say these feel sometimes like contemporary classics. Maybe Florida as a whole hit me more in the stomach; this one goes more for the heart.
Thanks to the New Yorker I'd read several of these before, and was happy to re-read. Violence runs through many - most - of these, likewise desire; against and of women. And the complexities, shades of grey, and settlements of which we're all capable. These stories always have a point of view, but their events and endings aren't predictable - so, for example, late middle-aged Eliza's turn back to her husband at the end of "Between the Shadow and the Soul" after the final-section reveals about him and the reasons for the childlessness, or the way Joanie's decision and trials to get her brother Buddy to the institution are vindicated in "To Sunland", or the lifelong tangle of Nichole and Birdie's friendship and the choices they made as teenage girls ("Birdie"), or the damage unwittingly done by the narrator - damage that any of us might have done when younger, less wise or at least less experienced - and the forgiveness granted to her amidst all the daughters and mothers in "Annunciation" (not the best story in this collection, I don't think, but maybe my favourite for its grace and flow - not that Groff requires comparisons, but this one reminded me so much of Rebecca Lee's seeming once-off Bobcat).
