We Are Flower Hunters

A WRITER'S WIT
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. 
​Voltaire
​Born November 21, 1694

New Yorker Fiction 2016

Jessica Roux

​November 21, Lauren Groff, “Flower Hunters”: A young Florida mother, on Halloween night, is left alone to dispense candy and reflect on why she has lost her best friend down the street. ¶ This nameless woman is afraid of many things, most of them on behalf of humanity or the animal world. She is heavy into reading early naturalist William Bartram, which may be one source of alienation from Meg down the street, her sons, or even her husband. She perhaps feels too much on behalf of the earth and its dwindling life. When the rain begins to pour, the woman tromps out to the corner of their yard to note that their new sinkhole is not filling with water, that the flood is more than likely filling a network of underground limestone canals.

---

     “For a minute, she lets herself imagine the larger sinkhole below the baby one opening very slowly and cupping her and the house and the dog and the piano all the way down to the very black bottom of the limestone hollow and gently depositing them there so far down that nobody could get her out, they could only visit, her family’s heads peering once in a while over the lip, tiny pale bits against the blue sky.
     From down there, everyone would seem so happy” (83)

Groff’s story is a subtly moving one about the full range of friendship, perhaps the flower that is most hunted. Groff’s novel, Fates and Furies, came out in September.
Illustrated by Jessica Roux

NEXT TIME: My Book World

---

READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!

At new prices. Paper: $10.75 | £7.75 | €8.50  Kindle: $2.99
 
Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"

Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

---