The opening story is about a woman who takes to walking at night to calm her recently-acquired propensity for yelling. It's a book about people - often women and mothers, but not always - becoming unmoored and losing their way. Two abandoned children fight against starvation. A stressed mother of two boys is injured in a literal cabin in the woods. A snake devotee meets his end in the wilderness, at the hands of his life's passion. The natural wonders and dangers of Florida play into almost all these stories. Small, hard-hitting snippets of lives that still make you feel emotionally-drained, but also thoughtful and satisfied. Reading her full-length novel was a chore, but for me at least, Groff seems born to write short stories. Groff's writing style is dense and wordy, metaphorical and poetic and - sometimes - exhausting. I have to say I enjoyed Florida so much more than Fates and Furies. Snakes, gators, swamps and storms form the backdrop of these exquisitely human stories. The truth might be moral, but it isn't always right.
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