In tales, danger lurks in every corner
The stories in the fierce new collection by the author of the novel “Fates and Furies” are not all set in Florida, but each is saturated with the overheated, dangerous and borderlinenightmarish atmosphere of the place as it exists in Lauren Groff’s imagination.
This is not the Florida of tourists lounging on sunny beaches; it’s the one of its steamy interior, rife with snakes and possibly panthers.
Groff, who grew up in upstate New York, now lives with her husband and children in Gainesville, and the stories have the ambivalent outlook of a resident who still doesn’t feel quite securely at home.
Several of the stories follow an unnamed mother with a shadowy husband and two preteen sons — the older dark and sensitive, • "Florida" (Riverhead, 288 pages, $27) by Lauren Groff
and the younger easygoing and “golden.”
This woman — and it’s unclear whether it’s the same character or a variation on the theme — is usually filled with dread, about both her personal life and the widening impact of climate change.
And she’s in danger, often because of her own choices.
In the deeply disturbing “The Midnight Zone,” she chooses to stay with her children at an isolated cabin with no cellphone service and no car while her husband goes home to work for a couple of days.
Then, attempting to change a light bulb, she falls and hits her head. The resulting concussion leaves her unconscious for several minutes and, at first, unable to remember the names of her children. Struggling to stay awake until her husband’s return, she feels her consciousness leaving her body.
Her descent into a kind of underworld — and the climb out, touched by the faintest hints of hope — echoes through many of the stories, often even more intensely.
In the horrifying and oddly beautiful “Dogs Go Wolf,” two sisters, ages 4 and 7, are abandoned at a fishing cabin “on an island in the middle of the ocean.” Left first by their feckless mother and then by the couple in the cabin next door, they wait out a hurricane in the company of a fluffy, white and increasingly feral dog.
After their generator fails and the food runs out, they eat a cherry ChapStick and “strange red berries from the bushes, though the mother had always said never to do that.”
Like the oddly inventive stories the older sister tells the younger, this one is a variation on traditional fairy tales, with the feeling of a dream tethered to the mundane details of domestic life.
Although each of the stories could be productively read on its own, together they create a mood stronger than any one story could establish. The world of “Florida” is perched on the edge of disaster, with monsters waiting around every tempting corner.