Praise for Brawler
“Groff is one of this country’s most successful and versatile literary figures… [These stories] seem like a homecoming, and honestly, something of a relief. If they have a shared theme, it is how the bedrock of family crumbles, and its members are forced to shift into new formations, occasionally tectonic.”—New York Times
“Few collections have an opener as powerful and instantly classic as Brawler’s…every story here continues a conversation about secrets, hopes, fears and the persistence of love in the face of it all...Brawler captures a towering talent and follows protagonists caught in the undertow of their messiest emotions…instead of easy epiphanies, [Groff] offers glimpses of acute clarity, meaning or happiness. They will not repeat; but they are enough to carry you through a life.” —Financial Times
“Anyone who picks up the book and idly starts reading the first story will be unable to stop without finishing it…Each of the nine rich tales has enough character detail and intrigue to fill a full-length novel…Groff also is hilarious, provocative and plenty of other adjectives. Long story short: Brawler is a knockout.” —Minnesota Star Tribune
“Her stories wrap intricate emotional nets around the reader…Brawler is both addictive and painful, the perfect size for a short story collection, each tale its own saturated, heavy narrative, weighted down with hope and hurt.”—Chicago Review of Books
“In the coiling dread and frank feminism of her work, this incandescent author makes clear with her newest fiction why she won the 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. This audacious collection surprises readers with the vivid lives few of us notice.”—Kirkus (starred)
“A gorgeous collection about families transformed by desperate circumstances…Groff sketches her characters with scalpel-like precision…Each of these heartbreaking tales will linger in the reader’s mind.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Thrillingly complex, wickedly strong girls and women populate the worlds of Groff’s third story collection. In total command of her characters’ nuances and the gray space they find themselves in, Groff shares brief, cryptic yet revealing notes about each story at book’s end, for the cherry on top.” —Booklist (starred)
Praise for Florida
“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.” —The New York Times
“Groff’s language is, as always, gorgeous and precise. Her ability to map the inner contours of characters who seem to exist entirely in extremis—and, almost entirely, within a fragile shell of feigned competence and normalcy—is remarkable.” —NPR
“Groff’s incomparable prose pulsates with peril; its beauty, like that of the titular state itself, lies in a certain wild lushness.” —Financial Times
“Groff’s writing is marvelous, her insights keen, each story a glittering, encrusted treasure hauled from the deep.” —The Economist
“[Groff] is one of the best writers in the United States, and her prizewinning stories reverberate long after they are read. ” —Los Angeles Review of Books
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