FLORIDA

Florida is a "superlative" book (Boston Globe), "frequently funny" (San Francisco Chronicle), "brooding,inventive and often moving" (NPR Fresh Air) --as Groffisrecognized as"Florida's unofficial poet laureate, as Joan Didion was for California." (Washington Post) In her thrilling new book, Lauren Groff bringsthe reader into a physical world that is at once domestic and wilda place where the hazards of the natural world lie waiting to pounce, yet the greatest threats and mysteries are still of an emotional, psychological nature. A family retreat can be derailed by a prowling panther, or by a sexual secret. Among those navigating this place are a resourceful pair of abandoned sisters; a lonely boy, grown up; a restless, childless couple, a searching, homeless woman; and an unforgettable, recurring charactera steely and conflicted wife and mother. The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Floridaits landscape, climate, history, and state of mindbecomes its gravitational center: an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence. Groff transports the reader, then jolts us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty, as she writes about loneliness, rage, family, and the passage of time. With shocking accuracy and effect, she pinpoints the moments and decisions and connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and furythe moments that make us alive. Startling, precise, and affecting,Floridais a magnificent achievement.