Florida

Product Description The universally-acclaimed return of the New York Times bestselling author of Fates and Furies, Matrix, and the highly-anticipated The Vaster Wilds In Lauren Groff’s Florida, the hot sun shines, but a wild darkness lurks. Florida is a "superlative" book (Boston Globe), "gorgeously weird and limber" (New Yorker), "frequently funny" (San Francisco Chronicle), "brooding, inventive and often moving" (NPR Fresh Air) -- as Groff is recognized as "Florida's unofficial poet laureate, as Joan Didion was for California." (Washington Post) "Groff's gifts as a writer just keep soaring higher and higher.” – NPR’s Fresh Air In her thrilling new book, Lauren Groff brings the reader into a physical world that is at once domestic and wild—a 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 character—a steely and conflicted wife and mother. The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes 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 fury—the moments that make us alive. Startling, precise, and affecting, Florida is a magnificent achievement. Review Praise for Florida: "Lauren Groff is a great storyteller . . . Florida is restorative fiction for these urgent times. Its final gestures, even the most ominous . . . lean toward love and the promise of good people, in not just this state but the world." – New York Times "Something untameable lurks restlessly beneath the surface of this book. Groff’s incomparable prose pulsates with peril; its beauty, like that of the titular state itself, lies in a certain wild lushness." – Financial Times "These new stories are tight and contained, and they pulse with menace and feral energy." – Wall Street Journal "Florida is a gift to writers. . . . There is more than a little of David Lynch in Ms Groff’s Floridian landscape: exotic and bright, yet pulsing with hidden malevolence . . . Ms Groff’s writing is marvelous, her insights keen, each story a glittering, encrusted treasure hauled from the deep." – The Economist "Haunting and arresting." – New York Times Book Review "As fine and beautifully crafted as any fiction she has written . . . . . [Groff] is one of the best writers in the United States, and her prize-winning stories reverberate long after they are read. In past years, the rare short story collection . . . has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Florida should be in the running next year." – LA Review of Books "Groff throws open the windows and turns off the A/C, mosquitoes and heatstroke be damned . . . Groff’s Florida may do the same thing for its readers: surprise and menace us, fascinate and sometimes frighten us, and leave the whole world fuller than it was before." – Slate "Masterful. . . Amid the horror, wonder perseveres." – Esquire "The gems here are like the Florida Keys: distinct islands, each beautiful in its own way. Meet a lonely runner, two lost sisters and a son growing up without his mother. Prepare to sweat, see snakes and get lost in a swamp. Groff’s depictions aren’t always pretty, but they’ll keep you turning the pages—and not just for the breeze." – People Magazine "[A] transcendent writer. . . [Florida] isn’t a sho