Book Review: Florida by Lauren Groff

Florida by Lauren Groff

Hardcover, 275 pages

Published June 2018 by Riverhead

National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (2018)

Kirkus Prize Nominee for Fiction (2018)

OK this book is a tad bit out of my wheelhouse as I am a horror and Science Fiction critic and writer. I like to read genre and while I consider myself a consumer of the smarter end of that spectrum I don't generally read "literature." By that I mean the stuff that is put on the literature shelves in Powell's books. In the eight years, I lived in Portland and shopped at Powell's I only bought Brian Evenson books out of that section. So let's face it I am not the target audience here.

I picked up Flordia because Dan Bloom the Cli-fi Blogger mentioned it on his blog. As an author of a Climate change novel myself, I was interested to read the state of the art by authors writing about it. I knew nothing else about it or the author. I went in so cold I thought it was a novel as I started reading it.

First thing I can say is that Lauren Groff is a great writer I can tell already. This book took a little bit to hook me but once I got into it I was sold on her ability. Her use of language is so strong and evocative that I am positive I never want to live in Florida. I don't think I could pay this book a higher compliment. The heat, the humidity, the snakes, the mold the dipping uncomfortable swamp living dripping off the pages.

as with any short story collection, there are stories of varying strength and weakness. The first story was not the best opener in my opinion. It was a great example of how to write a setting, but the vague character that seemed to be an author stand it didn't work for me. That said at that point I thought I was reading the first chapter of a novel. The second story was one of the strongest of the collection. "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" is a great vivid tale that could have sustained a novel. The setting and characters were rich and stick with you like something that doesn't quite wash off your hands.

I don't know if it was an intentional theme but Groff appears to share my fear of the creeping effect of climate change. That is what interested me in this book and so it should not be a surprise that the stories that focused on such impacted me the most. My other favorites "Flower Hunters" and "Snake stories" were favorites. I don't remember the title of the story set in the storm but that one showed that Groff knows how to add suspense something, not all MFA literature types can do.

Overall I liked this book and the best thing I can say is that I intend to track down her novel at some point. Climate change is a horror as great as the nuclear threat my generation lived with as children. The difference is it is a slowly creeping up on us. It is a monster in the shadows reaching out to grab up. It is not a jump scare but a building suspense. Lauren Groff captures this with subtly through most of the pages of this book.

Mostly she is doing this surgery with a scalpel, but a couple times the hammer comes out. "She is no longer frightened of reptiles, she who is afraid of everything. She is afraid of climate change."

Don't miss out.