Anyone who loved the novel Matrix—a book I still think about—will leap at newly published short-story collection Brawler by Lauren Groff. Groff’s incredible range is on full display in this engrossing collection. We travel from the East Coast to Southern California, from Boston aristocracy to Los Angeles trailer parks. The settings vary, but the family troubles remain the same, as does the capacity for both good and evil.
The collection starts with a bang. A bruised mother smuggles her children out at daybreak to escape their violent father. With only a few dollars in her pocket, a half-empty tank, and no plan, she starts driving. This story hits you in the gut, and the author’s notes reveal why: it is the story of Groff’s own grandmother—”a story that lived in my body before I even had language, passed down from my mother and my mother’s mother.”
Privilege is a trap for Chip, the hapless hero of What’s the time, Mr. Wolf? Born into a Boston banking family, he has everything going for him—or does he? Meanwhile, in Such Small Islands, Aura feels ignored by her babysitter who’s consumed by a new boyfriend; Aura’s desire to punish leads her down a dark path — “No child can be evil, but evil can thrive inside a child.”
Annunciation is the longest and perhaps strangest story in the collection. After her parents send “a dozen carnations dyed blue and a gift certificate to a clothing store for middle-aged women” instead of attending her graduation, our narrator rebels. Rather than driving home, she heads west, ending up in San Francisco. Living on a shoestring while working in social services, she stumbles upon Griselda, an eccentric German socialite who offers housing in exchange for “dirty jobs” around the house. A well-meaning concern for a colleague and her daughter, leads our narrator to make some poor choices. Lessons of life abound for our recent graduate.
There are plenty more gems in this collection, all touching a nerve. In the end notes, Groff reveals she has lived many of these lives herself and that’s what makes many of these stories so hard hitting, brilliant and believable.
Brawler by Lauren Groff is published by Hutchinson Heinemann, 272 pages.
