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A review by belbonnie
Florida by Lauren Groff
3.0
⟶ 3.5/5 stars
I actually first bought this book in 2017 after I heard one of the stories in it read on NPR's Selected Shorts. The story was "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" and I just fell in love with the prose and atmosphere on the spot and knew I needed to read it.
For the most part, it held up! The prose is really beautiful, and every story is incredibly atmospheric and tonally powerful, and they keep you just waiting to see what happens next. Groff is a master of building suspense and this slow, heavy feeling of dread that makes you sure something terrible is about to happen and makes for a morbidly exciting read. The only thing that really gave me trouble was that each story was about a different woman, in theory, but they were so, so similar. For the most part, they were women in fine but lacking marriages, with two young sons she adores but feels distant from, thinking about the dangers of the world. It's a narrative repeated in at least three of the pieces, and for me it got a bit tiring, but overall still a great collection.
I actually first bought this book in 2017 after I heard one of the stories in it read on NPR's Selected Shorts. The story was "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" and I just fell in love with the prose and atmosphere on the spot and knew I needed to read it.
For the most part, it held up! The prose is really beautiful, and every story is incredibly atmospheric and tonally powerful, and they keep you just waiting to see what happens next. Groff is a master of building suspense and this slow, heavy feeling of dread that makes you sure something terrible is about to happen and makes for a morbidly exciting read. The only thing that really gave me trouble was that each story was about a different woman, in theory, but they were so, so similar. For the most part, they were women in fine but lacking marriages, with two young sons she adores but feels distant from, thinking about the dangers of the world. It's a narrative repeated in at least three of the pieces, and for me it got a bit tiring, but overall still a great collection.