Some practitioners of the short story, a form in flux that’s suffered since the erosion of magazines, are praised for their polish and compactness. Lauren Groff produces rough beasts that slouch off in unexpected directions and spawn. There’s often a little story within the story, a joey in a marsupial pouch ... they 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. The stories are folksy, a little retro and sensual, with multiple dips into earthy, furtive lesbian lust ... The stories in Brawler are, again, rough, in all senses of the word. Upsetting; uneven. But 'no writer worth his salt is even, or can be,' Eudora Welty wrote, reviewing Salinger’s lonely nine in these pages. And Groff is spilling so much salt right now, Morton should give her a jingle.
Should come with a warning because 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.
An aptly titled collection that wallops its reader with ferocious honesty and searing emotional force even as it demonstrates artistic delicacy, intellectual subtlety, and ethical nuance.
Groff successfully blends the depth of the long view and the drama of the pivotal moment ... Groff foregrounds...characters’ emotional strength, but she’s also careful not to descend into easy platitudes about resilience. Her women aren’t triumphing so much as sidestepping death, and forced to live with their choices’ aftereffects for years to come ... Spirited, anguished.
Atmospheric ... Few collections have an opener as powerful and instantly classic as Brawler’s 'The Wind' ... For most writers, 'The Wind' would be an impossible act to follow, and yet every story here continues a conversation about secrets, hopes, fears and the persistence of love in the face of it all ... Poignant ... The title story, Brawler, showcases both Groff’s power and her subtlety ... Groff’s bargain with the reader is simple, and impossible to refuse: instead of easy epiphanies, she offers glimpses of acute clarity, meaning or happiness.
Lauren Groff’s prose draws readers in with such slowness that they’re caught before they’re fully cognizant, trapped in a net of powerful feeling that she’s already laid down. Her stories wrap intricate emotional nets around the reader, distracting them with plot points, visions, and humor just long enough to pull the trap tight and immerse us in a rush of often painful human feeling. 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.
Fizzy, electric ... These aren’t those obscure, vibey short stories where nothing happens — their characters are distinctive, their plots exciting ... Thrums with tension ... Groff is a great writer. Her stories chew you up and spit you out and leave you feeling immensely satisfied.
Stories that sound like fairy tales before details with the heft and texture of reality gradually arrive ... This slippage between modes, between the real and the fantastical, is the source of the most noticeable weakness in Groff’s work: a certain fuzziness at the level of psychology ... This same slippage, though, gives the best of these stories an ability to startle and unsettle ... Every page of Brawler contains flashes of wonderfully alert observation ... This is what Lauren Groff, at her best, can do: leave the real world behind in search of something more frightening, and more true.
Exceptional ... The prose is stellar and the endings breathtaking. Groff (The Vaster Wilds) is a first-rate novelist, but her short stories are truly peerless.
