Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region—from New England to Florida to California—these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans' dark and light angels.
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.
