Something in the Water
Catherine Steadman, 2018
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781524797188
Summary
If you could make one simple choice that would change your life forever, would you?
Erin is a documentary filmmaker on the brink of a professional breakthrough, Mark a handsome investment banker with big plans. Passionately in love, they embark on a dream honeymoon to the tropical island of Bora Bora, where they enjoy the sun, the sand, and each other. Then, while scuba diving in the crystal blue sea, they find something in the water…
Could the life of your dreams be the stuff of nightmares?
Suddenly the newlyweds must make a dangerous choice: to speak out or to protect their secret. After all, if no one else knows, who would be hurt? Their decision will trigger a devastating chain of events.
Have you ever wondered how long it takes to dig a grave?
Wonder no longer. Catherine Steadman’s enthralling voice shines throughout this spellbinding debut novel. With piercing insight and fascinating twists, Something in the Water challenges the reader to confront the hopes we desperately cling to, the ideals we’re tempted to abandon, and the perfect lies we tell ourselves. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 8, 1987
• Where—New Forest in Southern England, UK
• Education—Oxford School of Drama
• Currently—lives in North London, England
Catherine Steadman is an English actress and author, best known for playing Mabel Lane Fox in Downton Abbey (series 5, 2014). She is the author of two psychological thrillers, Something in the Water (2018) and Mr. Nobody (2020).
Steadman trained at the Oxford School of Drama and made her screen debut playing Julia Bertram in the ITV adaptation of Mansfield Park opposite Billie Piper, James D'arcy, Rory Kinnear & Michelle Ryan. Since then she has appeared in television dramas such as the CBC/Showtime co-production The Tudors (playing Joan Bulmer), Holby City, Law & Order: UK, Missing, Lewis, Quirke (alongside Gabriel Byrne), Fearless (opposite Helen McCrory(, and Victoria.
Most notably she played Nurse Wilson in the ITV drama Breathless, Maggie Lewis in Tutankhamun, as well as Mabel Lane Fox in Downton Abbey. She has also appeared in several comedy series such as The Inbetweeners, Fresh Meat, Trying Again and Bucket. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/20/2018.)
Book Reviews
[A] deftly paced, elegantly chilly thriller… Steadman brings… wit, timing and intelligence to this novel…Something in the Water is a proper page-turner, not just a novel produced by a celebrity to whom some wine-weakened publisher said at a cocktail party, "You should write a book!"
Sara Lyall - New York Times
[T]hreats and increasingly bad decisions accelerate with Bourne-like velocity…. Although not all of the plot gambles prove equally successful, daring choices, such as opening with a scene of the desperate Erin digging a grave, mark Steadman as a newcomer worth watching.
Publishers Weekly
Documentary filmmaker Erin and banker Mark are on a glorious Bora Bora honeymoon when they discover a bag stuffed with glittering valuables, which changes their lives in a way that's not so good. A writing debut from the actress who played Mabel Lane Fox in Downton Abbey.
Library Journal
This debut’s opening hook, which jumps ahead in the story to reveal a shocking outcome, teamed with Erin’s spunk and the threat of Russian mobsters, creates irresistible suspense—of both the what-will-happen and the how-did-that-happen varieties.
Booklist
(Starred review) With unreliable characters, wry voices, exquisite pacing, and a twisting plot, Steadman potently draws upon her acting chops.… A darkly glittering gem of a thriller from a new writer to watch.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel begins with the striking scene of Erin digging a grave, then flashes back in time to describe the events leading up to it. Is this an effective way to enter the story? Did the opening pages hook you? Why or why not?
2. Erin’s career as a documentary filmmaker puts her in touch with incarcerated people she may never have met otherwise, and her relationship with Eddie is especially complex. She never tells Mark about him and is drawn to him during her interviews. She befriends a known criminal. Why does Erin become so closely involved with him? How genuine are her connections with her other documentary subjects, and how do those relationships affect the events in the novel?
3. Throughout the novel, Erin makes questionable decisions in order to secure what she thinks is the best future for her and Mark. Did you sympathize with her or criticize her actions? Does she ever become suspicious or untrustworthy as a narrator?
4. Catherine Steadman is a professional actress and wrote parts of Something in the Water whilst on set. Can you identify ways in which her writing process may have influenced the tone and/or structure of the novel? What struck you about her writing style?
5. After their discovery on the scuba dive, how does Erin and Mark’s relationship change? Despite the secrets they’re hiding from each other, they do not struggle intimately. Do they truly love each other?
6. Money is a motivating factor in Erin and Mark’s decisions, and the idea of the fiscal divide between the extremely wealthy and the middle classes percolates through the novel. Are the characters in the novel motivated by greed? Or survival? Do financial issues have the power to tear people apart?
7. Erin references her family only briefly, focusing most of the narrative on Mark and her documentary subjects. Why do you think her family gets so little page time? Eddie’s daughter, Charlotte McInroy, tells Erin that she disconnected from her family and created a life "from scratch." Do these two women have similar stories? Does Erin make a life "from scratch"?
8. Erin is often very empathetic, and she doesn’t blame Mark for the consequences of their actions until she has no other choice. Does this reflect a broader tendency for partners to excuse their spouses’ behaviors or put them on a pedestal? Is that reaction even more common among women than men?
9. Erin learns a striking piece of news in the closing pages of the book. Will this affect her character for the better—or for the worse? Do you think Erin is capable of committing a crime herself in the future?
10. The novel ends with Erin thinking, "You can’t save everyone. Sometimes you just have to save yourself." What sacrifices does Erin have to make to save herself? Does she leave anyone behind? Would you have made the same choices?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Authenticity Project
Clare Pooley, 2020
Penguin Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781984878618
Summary
The story of a solitary green notebook that brings together six strangers and leads to unexpected friendship, and even love
Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with each other.
But what if they were?
And so he writes—in a plain, green journal—the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local cafe. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street.
Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves—and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café.
The Authenticity Project's cast of characters—including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends—is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward—and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness.
The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for—and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Clare Pooley is a British blogger and author of both a memoir and a novel. She is the daughter of Peter Pooley CMG, a former Director-General of the European Commission. Pooley earned a degree in economics from Newnham College, Cambridge.
Career
Pooley first pursued a career in advertising at J. Walter Thompson, where she attained the position of managing partner and group head. She left the agency, however, after the birth of her third child.
In 2015, Pooley began a blog, "Mummy was a Secret Drinker," about her life following a resolution to give up alcohol. She blogged under a pseudonym until the announcement of her first book, which was published in 2017. That book, The Sober Diaries, recounted her first year of sobriety, as well as an account of her successful battle with breast cancer. Her second book, The Authenticity Project, a novel, came out in 2020.
Personal life
Pooley lives with her husband and their three children in London, England. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved on 2/25/2020.)
Book Reviews
Poole succeeds in persuasively conveying the daily texture of city life, and in creating appealing characters we want to see happy.… [The] cheerful premise demands bite to balance its not-always-believable sweetness.… At times, its overly broad characterization and cliched gestures detract from the story.… And yet, several reversals and a neat twist mean that The Authenticity Project grows stronger toward its end: a rarity for novels.… [A]n enjoyable read that is cozy…in the best sense of the word.
USA Today
This wistful, humorous tale from Pooley… maintains a quick, satisfying pace as the characters’ simple, spontaneous acts affect each other’s lives. This is a beautiful and illuminating story of self-creation.
Publishers Weekly
Not only a charming story of strangers connecting in beguiling ways, this debut fiction by memoirist and blogger Pooley is a thoughtful meditation on authenticity in the age of self-promotion. Recommended for readers looking for a pick-me-up.
Library Journal
The secret sauce that spices this book is that all the diarists are busybodies to some degree, so they wind up interacting in strange and unexpected ways.… The book is composed of fairly short chapters…, and while it moves along at a bracing clip, the thread is always easy to follow.
BookPage
A group of strangers…in London become fast friends after writing their deepest secrets in a shared notebook.… The message is strong, urging readers to get off their smartphones and social media and live in the real, authentic world.…An enjoyable, cozy novel that touches on tough topics
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Julian writes, "Everyone lies about their lives." Is this true? Do you?
2. Julian calls his notebook "The Authenticity Project." Do you think people are increasingly searching for authenticity in today’s world? If so, why? How do they go about it? How do you?
3. We are all connected via huge social media communities, but increased online interaction often comes at the expense of the type of local, real-life community provided by Monica’s Cafe and Julian’s Supper Club. What do these communities give us that virtual ones do not?
4. Most of the characters in the book are lonely, but in very different ways. What are the various forms of loneliness explored in The Authenticity Project?
5. The story is told from the perspectives of six main characters. Who did you relate to the most, and why? Which character is least like yourself?
6. Baz keeps the truth from his grandmother in order to spare her feelings. Julian avoids the truth to protect himself. Are there times when admitting the truth isn’t the right thing to do? Explain.
7. We all make snap judgements about each other, and often they’re wrong. What incorrect assumptions do The Authenticity Project characters make about each other, and what are the consequences?
8. There is a scene in the book where Monica and Alice first see each other through the café window, and both want what the other has. What does The Authenticity Project teach us about envy?
9. Riley is the only character in the novel who doesn’t have an obvious fatal flaw. Does this make him more loveable, or less? How does Riley act as a touchstone for the other characters?
10. If you found "The Authenticity Project," what truth would you tell?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Such a Fun Age
Kiley Reid, 2019
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525541905
Summary
A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same.
So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket.
The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.
But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life.
When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.
With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone "family," and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1987
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Raised—Tucson, Arizona
• Education—Marymount Manhattan College; University of Arkansas, M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Kiley Reid was born in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Tucson, Arizona. She studied acting at Marymount Manhattan College and creative writing at the University of Arkansas. She recieved her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Reid's debut novel, Such a Fun Age (December 31, 2019) explores the relationship between a young black babysitter and her well-intentioned white employer. Within two weeks of its release, the novel ranked #3 on the New York Times hardcover fiction list.
Reid, who spent six years caring for the children of wealthy Manhattanites, began the novel while applying to graduate school. She completed the book while earning her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop; both book and screen rights were acquired before she graduated.
During her time at the Iowa Workshop, she was awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship. She also taught undergraduate creative writing workshops with a focus on race and class.
Reid's short stories have been featured in Ploughshares, December, New South, and Lumina. Currently, she lives in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/25/2020.)
Book Reviews
Reid constructs a plot so beautifully intricate and real and fascinating that readers will forget that it’s also full of tough questions about race, class and identity…. With this entertaining novel, Reid subverts our notions of what it means to write about race and class in America, not to mention what it means to write about love. In short, it’s a great way to kick off 2020.
Washington Post
An exploration of race and racism and misguided perceptions of the issue, executed with wit and a sharp edge…[Such a Fun Age] reveals how trapped black people who work in service jobs for white people feel, how easily privileged whites—who would protest any claims of prejudice—can fetishize blacks, or fail to see them as fully three-dimensional humans. And yes, dear reader, you are implicated in this too.
Boston Globe
A complex, layered page-turner…. This is a book that will read, I suspect, quite differently to various audiences—funny to some, deeply uncomfortable and shamefully recognizable to others—but whatever the experience, I urge you to read Such a Fun Age. Let its empathetic approach to even the ickiest characters stir you, allow yourself to share Emira’s millennial anxieties about adulting, take joy in the innocence of Briar’s still-unmarred personhood, and rejoice that Kiley Reid is only just getting started.
NPR
Lively…. [A] carefully observed study of class and race, whose portrait of white urban affluence—Everlane sweaters, pseudo-feminist babble—is especially pointed. Attempting to navigate the white conscience in the age of Black Lives Matter, Reid unsparingly maps the moments when good intentions founder.
New Yorker
Reid’s acerbic send-up of identity politics thrives in the tension between the horror and semiabsurdity of race relations in the social media era. But she is too gifted a storyteller to reduce her tale to, well, black-and-white…. Clever and hilariously cringe-y, this debut is a provocative reminder of what the road to hell is paved with.
Oprah Magazine
[A] funny, fast-paced social satire about privilege in America.… Beneath her comedy of good intentions, [Reid] stages a Millennial bildungsroman that is likely to resonate with 20-something postgraduates scrambling to get launched in just about any American city.
Atlantic
Fun is the operative word in Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid’s delectably discomfiting debut. The buzzed-about novel takes a thoroughly modern approach to the timeless upstairs-downstairs trope.… Told from alternating points of view, the novel loops through vibrant vignettes set in reggaeton nightclubs and Philadelphia farmers markets before landing firmly on one side of the maternal divide…. This page-turner goes down like comfort food, but there’s no escaping the heartburn.
Vogue
Kiley Reid has written the most provocative page-turner of the year.… [Such a Fun Age] nestl[es] a nuanced take on racial biases and class divides into a page-turning saga of betrayals, twists, and perfectly awkward relationships.… The novel feels bound for book-club glory, due to its sheer readability. The dialogue crackles with naturalistic flair. The plotting is breezy and surprising. Plus, while Reid’s feel for both the funny and the political is undeniable, she imbues her flawed heroes with real heart.
Entertainment Weekly
Such a Fun Age is blessedly free of preaching, but if Reid has an ethos, it’s attention: the attention Emira pays to who Briar really is, and the attention that Alix fails to pay to Emira, instead spending her time thinking about her…. The novel is often funny and always acute, but never savage; Reid is too fascinated by how human beings work to tear them apart. All great novelists are great listeners, and Such a Fun Age marks the debut of an extraordinarily gifted one.
Slate
Reid crafts a nuanced portrait of a young black woman struggling to define herself apart from the white people in her life who are all too ready to speak and act on her behalf.… This is an impressive, memorable first outing.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Reid illuminates difficult truths about race, society, and power with a fresh, light hand. We're all familiar with the phrases white privilege and race relations, but rarely has a book vivified these terms in such a lucid, absorbing, graceful, forceful, but unforced way.
Library Journal
In her smart and timely debut, Reid has her finder solidly on the pulse of the pressures and ironies inherent in social media, privilege, modern parenting, racial tension, and political correctness.
Booklist
(Starred review) Reid’s debut sparkles with sharp observations and perfect details—food, decor, clothes, social media, etc.—and she's a dialogue genius.… Her evenhandedness with her varied cast of characters is impressive.… Charming, challenging, and so interesting you can hardly put it down.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Such a Fun Age is told from the perspectives of two highly different women: Emira and Alix. How did the narration impact your reading experience? Did you re-late more to one woman than the other? Did that change as you read the novel?
2. After Kelley takes the video of Emira in the grocery store, she asks him not to release it. Did you understand her request? What would you have done if you were in her position?
3. The question of parental vs. parental-figure relationships is pivotal in this story. How does Briar’s relationship with Emira differ from that with her mother? How do Emira and Alix each relate to Briar in turn?
4. While the "age" in the title recalls childhood, the novel is very much about Emira’s pivotal age and her experience as a twenty-five-year old learning how to be a grown-up. Talk about some of Emira’s challenges, as well as her freedoms. How does her experience compare or differ to your own?
5. An unexpected person links Emira and Alix. What was your reaction when you realized the connection? How did it make you view Alix differently? Emira?
6. Kelley is the first to point out the racist accusations against Emira, but at times, he seems to forget they have very different experiences, whereas Emira is always aware of it. Talk about the moments where they don’t seem to communicate well about their specific perspectives.
7. Kelley and Alix have a fraught history. Do you think Alix is right to blame Kelley for many of her issues growing up? Do you think Kelley’s perception of Alix as spoiled and privileged is fair?
8. Alix devotes herself to befriending Emira, but Emira only sees Alix as her employer. At the end of the day, did you find their relationship to be anything more than transactional? In what ways do each of the woman try to either maintain or disrupt that boundary?
9. Toward the end of the novel, Alix is confronted with the possibility that she had not acted in Emira’s best interests. Do you think Alix meant well by getting involved in Emira’s situation? Do her intentions ultimately matter?
10. The last chapter follows Emira in the years after the incident at the Chamberlains’. In what way did things change, if at all? Did anything you learned about Kelley, Alix, or Briar surprise you?
11. There are many uncomfortable, but relatable, moments in Such a Fun Age. In what ways did you see your own experiences reflected in this story? How did you feel seeing them explored through the characters?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)
Dear Edward
Ann Napolitano, 2020
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781984854780
Summary
What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live?
One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles.
Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband.
Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.
Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a part of himself has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers.
But then he makes an unexpected discovery—one that will lead him to the answers of some of life’s most profound questions: When you’ve lost everything, how do you find the strength to put one foot in front of the other? How do you learn to feel safe again? How do you find meaning in your life?
Dear Edward is at once a transcendent coming-of-age story, a multidimensional portrait of an unforgettable cast of characters, and a breathtaking illustration of all the ways a broken heart learns to love again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Ann Napolitano is the author of the novels A Good Hard Look (2011), Within Arm’s Reach (2004), and Dear Edward (2020). She is also the associate editor of One Story literary magazine.
Napolitano received an MFA from New York University. She has taught fiction writing at Brooklyn College’s MFA program, New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and Gotham Writers Workshop. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] haunting novel that's a masterful study in suspense, grief and survival…. Napolitano's fearless examination of what took place models a way forward for all of us. She takes care not to sensationalize, presenting even the most harrowing scenes in graceful, understated prose, and gives us a powerful book about living a meaningful life during the most difficult of times.
Angie Kim - New York Times Book Review
There’s something brutal about killing a planeload of people and then introducing a handful of them and killing them all over again. But the cruelty of this aspect of the novel’s structure is countered by the astonishing tenderness of other sections.… Napolitano captures the subtle shades of Edward’s spirit like the earliest intimations of dawn… [and] in Napolitano’s gentle handling, it’s persistently lovely.… [Dear Edward is] one of the most touching stories you’re likely to read in the new year.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Make sure you have tissues handy when you read Ann Napolitano's Dear Edward, a sure-footed tearjerker about the miraculous—but troubled—survival of a 12-year-old boy…. [M]oving…. Dear Edward is in part a tale of survivor guilt, which is fueled by the weight of oppressive, often bizarre expectations on the miracle boy, especially from the families of victims who want him to fulfill their loved ones' dreams and plans.
Heller McAlpin - NPR
Exquisite… an insightful and moving testament to the indomitability of the human spirit.
People
A sort of willful tearjerker…. The first chapter, an ode to the mundane routines of air travel, contains real bite and an authenticity the novel loses hold of; subsequent airborne revelations (She’s pregnant! He’s gay!) feel indulgently mawkish. But Edward’s path to finding purpose and connection is realized with an affecting, quiet empathy. You’ll sob to the end.
Entertainment Weekly
The potent prose brings readers close to the complex emotional and psychological fallout after tragedy.… [B]ut by the end, readers will feel a comforting sense of solace. Napolitano’s depiction of the nuances of post-trauma experiences is fearless, compassionate, and insightful.
Publishers Weekly
[P]enetrating…. [W]hat makes this narrative so effective is its alternating between the ordinary events unfolding on the flight and the aftermath of the crash, which keeps the sense of loss and the significance of what has happened fresh in readers' minds. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review) With its expert pacing and picture-perfect final page, Dear Edward is a wondrous read. It is a skillful and satisfying examination of not only what it means to survive, but of what it means to truly live.
Booklist
For some readers, Napolitano's premise will be too dark to bear…[with] our inability to protect ourselves or our children from the worst-case scenario…. Well-written and insightful but so heartbreaking that it raises the question of what a reader is looking for in fiction.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Florida: Stories
Lauren Groff, 2018
Penguin Publishing
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594634512
Summary
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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 23, 1978
• Where—Cooperstown, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Amherst College; M.F.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Awards—Pushcart Prize
• Currently—lives in Gainesville, Florida
Lauren Groff is an American novelist and short story writer, who was as born and raised in Cooperstown, New York. She graduated from Amherst College and from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with an MFA in fiction.
Novels
Groff is the author of three novels. Her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton (2008), is a contemporary tale about coming home to Templeton, a stand-in for Cooperstown, New York. Interspersed in the book are voices from characters drawn from the town's history, as well as from James from Fenimore Cooper's 1823 The Pioneers, the first book in the Leatherstocking Tales. Fenimore Cooper set his book in a fictionalized Cooperstown which he, too, called Templeton. Groff's debut landed on the New York Times Bestseller list and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers.
Groff's second novel, Arcadia (2012), recounts the story of the first child born in a fictional 1960s commune in upstate New York. It, too, became a New York Times Bestseller, received solid reviews, and was named as one of the Best Books of 2012 by the New York Times, Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, NPR, Vogue, Toronto Globe and Mail, and Christian Science Monitor.
Fates and Furies (2015), Groff's third novel, examines a complicated marriage over the course of 24 years aas told by first the husband, then his wife. Like her previous novels, it, too, was published to wide acclaim, some calling it "brilliant," with Ron Charles of the Washington Post saying that "Lauren Groff just keeps getting better and better."
Stories
Groff has had short stories published in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Five Points, and Ploughshares, as well as the anthologies Best New American Voices 2008, Pushcart Prize XXXII, and Best American Short Stories—the 2007, 2010 and 2014 editions. Many of her stories appear in her collection Delicate Edible Birds (2009).
Personal
Groff is married with two children and currently lives in Gainesville, Florida. Groff's sister is the Olympic Triathlete Sarah True. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2015.)
Book Reviews
Readers can practically feel the mosquitoes buzzing at their necks in stories Ms. Groff started writing a decade ago after moving to Florida.… In her stories, predators bite, hurricanes destroy and nature does not forgive.
Wall Street Journal
[Groff] stakes her claim to being Florida's unofficial poet laureate, as Joan Didion was for California,
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Superlative collection—seriously, there’s not a dud in the bunch.… Groff is an extra terrific writer, as ever.… Having followed an astonishing, astonishingly accessible novel with such an outstanding, accessible collection, Groff is surely poised to topple the tiny monkeys in charge of deciding that the perceived realm of the feminine isn’t sufficiently deep.
Boston Globe
[The stories] take on an inexplicably cohesive form with a sad-, beautiful- and naked-ness that reverberates in the mind long after the book is shut.
Atlanta Constitution-Journal
Groff is still on-brand. Her writing about relationships rarely sticks within the narrow, Updike-ian confines of domestic dysfunction, though. Even in short stories, she prefers broader canvases, and much of Florida is filled with hurricanes and other violent storms that run parallel to the personal crises she describes.… Straightforward but moody and metaphorical—magical realism without the sparkle and sense of wonder.
Los Angeles Times
Groff’s desire seems to be to show—in a frequently funny, sometimes painful and always deeply sensitive way—that women and children are often stronger than we tend to think, and that the Earth is more fragile than we usually allow ourselves to understand.
San Francisco Chronicle
[T]ogether, the stories have the feel of autobiography, although, as in a Salvador Dali painting, their emotional disclosures are encrypted in phantasmagoria.… The sentences indigenous to Florida are gorgeously weird and limber.
New Yorker
Slime mold, a father killed by snake venom, a mother haunted by a deadly panther, and half-feral little girls abandoned on an island—these bizarre happenings could be set only in the Sunshine State, and be written only by Groff, the Gabriel García Márquez of Gainesville. Reading as required as insect repellent in a swamp.
O Magazine
Ferocious weather and self-destructive impulses plague the characters in this assured collection…. Groff’s skillful prose, self-awareness, and dark humor leaven the bleakness, making this a consistently rewarding collection.
Publishers Weekly
A frank, rambunctious, generous writer, Groff… provides slice-of-life reading, capturing the scents and sounds of her newly adopted state, Florida.… Well-observed, unexpected writing for fans and more.
Library Journal
(Starred review) These are raw, danger-riddled, linguistically potent pieces. They unsettle their readers at every pass.… And Groff gets the humid, pervasive white racism that isn't her point but curdles through plenty of her characters. A literary tour de force.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our talking points to help start a discussion for FLORIDA … then take off on your own:
1. Talk about some of the ways the stories, as a whole or separately, portray the state of Florida—sometimes, for instance, it is a "dense, damp tangle," or perhaps "an Eden of dangerous things."
2. (Follow-up to Question 1) How, then, might Florida, reveal the complexities of human life (or human psychology)—our desires, fears, sorrows, illnesses?
3. Although the stories in Florida are not quite magical realism, describe how they tend to blur what is real and what is imaginary.
4. Consider the appearance of the cougar at the beginning of "The Midnight Zone"—described as "the glimpse of "something terrible," "the darkest thing," which seems to portend the mother's cancer. What other symbols does Lauren Groff use in these stories that carry the weight of the human condition?
5. After reading this collection of stories, will you ever visit Florida again? If you live in the state, does Groff write about the Florida you know—do you recognize this Florida?
6. Which story is your favorite—and your least favorite? Do all the stories work, or are some less successful than others?
7. In "Ghosts and Empties," what stokes the wife's anger as she walks at night and peers into her neighbors' windows? When she enters the drugstore to buy Epsom salts, she leaves without buying what she has come for. Why? What does she mean when she says "I am not ready for such easy absolution as this. I can't"?
8. In "Above and Below," what prompts the graduate student to leave her life as a student and take up that of a homeless person? Is her decision an act of escape… or protest? Or is it neither? Perhaps it's something else.
9. Overall, how would you describe the tone of these eleven stories?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)