 | A WRITER'S WIT |  M. Dixon |
MY BOOK WORLD
Groff, Lauren. BRAWLER: STORIES. New York: Riverhead, 2026.
It’s always challenging for an author to select a title for a story collection, especially if one is using a title from said collection. Yet author Groff has chosen the right one, because every main character here is a “brawler,” a fighter, sometimes a brash one at that—sometimes one who just never gives up. I love one of Groff’s previous collections, Florida, which brings that jungle of a state alive for me in a way I’ve never read before. She does the same and more with these nine jewels.
“The Wind” is about a mother and her children who attempt to escape from an abusive husband and father. I value how Groff “saves” these characters, gives the reader a satisfying but unsentimental explanation for how they wind up, giving this narrative some “longevity,” in which the reader sees into the future a bit:
The three children survived. Eventually they would save themselves, struggling into lives and loves far from this place and this moment, each finding a kind of safe harbor, jobs and people and houses empty of violence. But always inside my mother there would blow a silent wind, a wind that died and gusted again, raging throughout her life, touching every moment she lived after this one” (17).
And just when you think this may be the final word about the titular and metaphorical wind, you see it is not: “She was far from being the first to find it blowing through her, and of course I will not be the last. I look around and can see it in so many other women, passed down from a time beyond history, this wind that is dark and ceaseless and raging within” (18).
Another story that fascinates me is “What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?”—one of those titles that seems to bear no relationship to the content of the story, for there is not one mention of a so-called wolf. But yet there lurks a certain danger, page after page, creating menace and havoc for the protagonist, Chip. This story is one of those I admire most, compressing a lifetime into an eighty-plus pager. Young Chip is part of an old and wealthy family and never quite fits in.
In his twenties, he meets Pearl, an older woman, a restauranteur owning a modest place, who seduces Chip into having a sex-only-and-only-when-I-want-it kind of relationship. Chip, who has never sustained a close tie with anyone in his family except his sister Libby, a kind of guardian angel who doesn’t always cherish her role, especially as the two siblings age, is smitten with the homely, plump woman. Spoiler alert: in the last paragraph, Groff finally allows a shotgun mentioned several times earlier to explode (by Chekhov’s rule, it must be fired):
And of course at this moment Pearl did not think of Chip; she did not wonder about where he was just then, whether he was warming up in the shower back in his cottage; or perched slowly freezing upon a log as the snow whispered all around him and he fell into his longest sleep yet; or whether he was on the log in the night in the snow, raising the scope and thus the rifle to his face in his numb hands, seeing Pearl so whole in her life without him that his body shuddered beyond his control, his pride was touched, his finger moved, and he brought them into a greater darkness yet” (204).
Whew! Groff’s writing is so effective at showing readers what is happening and yet so pure, emanating so beautifully, like the lyricism of a poem. I feel I must now locate all her books and allow each one like an innocent yet threatening wave at the beach to bowl me over—much like this one has.
Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Edwin Way
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Alla Nazimova
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Jolley
FRI: A Writer's Wit | Federico García Lorca
My Book World | TBD
It’s always challenging for an author to select a title for a story collection, especially if one is using a title from said collection. Yet author Groff has chosen the right one, because every main character here is a “brawler,” a fighter, sometimes a brash one at that—sometimes one who just never gives up. I love one of Groff’s previous collections, Florida, which brings that jungle of a state alive for me in a way I’ve never read before. She does the same and more with these nine jewels.
“The Wind” is about a mother and her children who attempt to escape from an abusive husband and father. I value how Groff “saves” these characters, gives the reader a satisfying but unsentimental explanation for how they wind up, giving this narrative some “longevity,” in which the reader sees into the future a bit:
The three children survived. Eventually they would save themselves, struggling into lives and loves far from this place and this moment, each finding a kind of safe harbor, jobs and people and houses empty of violence. But always inside my mother there would blow a silent wind, a wind that died and gusted again, raging throughout her life, touching every moment she lived after this one” (17).
And just when you think this may be the final word about the titular and metaphorical wind, you see it is not: “She was far from being the first to find it blowing through her, and of course I will not be the last. I look around and can see it in so many other women, passed down from a time beyond history, this wind that is dark and ceaseless and raging within” (18).
Another story that fascinates me is “What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?”—one of those titles that seems to bear no relationship to the content of the story, for there is not one mention of a so-called wolf. But yet there lurks a certain danger, page after page, creating menace and havoc for the protagonist, Chip. This story is one of those I admire most, compressing a lifetime into an eighty-plus pager. Young Chip is part of an old and wealthy family and never quite fits in.
In his twenties, he meets Pearl, an older woman, a restauranteur owning a modest place, who seduces Chip into having a sex-only-and-only-when-I-want-it kind of relationship. Chip, who has never sustained a close tie with anyone in his family except his sister Libby, a kind of guardian angel who doesn’t always cherish her role, especially as the two siblings age, is smitten with the homely, plump woman. Spoiler alert: in the last paragraph, Groff finally allows a shotgun mentioned several times earlier to explode (by Chekhov’s rule, it must be fired):
And of course at this moment Pearl did not think of Chip; she did not wonder about where he was just then, whether he was warming up in the shower back in his cottage; or perched slowly freezing upon a log as the snow whispered all around him and he fell into his longest sleep yet; or whether he was on the log in the night in the snow, raising the scope and thus the rifle to his face in his numb hands, seeing Pearl so whole in her life without him that his body shuddered beyond his control, his pride was touched, his finger moved, and he brought them into a greater darkness yet” (204).
Whew! Groff’s writing is so effective at showing readers what is happening and yet so pure, emanating so beautifully, like the lyricism of a poem. I feel I must now locate all her books and allow each one like an innocent yet threatening wave at the beach to bowl me over—much like this one has.
Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Edwin Way
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Alla Nazimova
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Elizabeth Jolley
FRI: A Writer's Wit | Federico García Lorca
My Book World | TBD
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