Teresa's Reviews > Florida

Though I’m guessing several of these stories are autobiographical in nature, most have a distancing effect. Even in some of the third-person narrations, for only one thing, we’re not told the name of the main characters. These main characters are mostly wine-drinking mothers, with two young boys, living in Florida though originally from upstate New York, mostly happily married, though the husbands are largely absent. The characters are called “the mother,” “the older/bigger boy,” “the younger/little boy.”

The first story is not one of plot, setting the stage of a northern Florida neighborhood that the narrator obsessively walks, eventually noting changes in the place and people. As she describes her walks, I felt as if she had spied on my own. Parental anxiety about children having to fend for themselves informs a few of the stories. There are snakes, hurricanes (and a perfectly described storm in Salvador), oppressive heat, and sinkholes.

Groff’s strength is her novelistic short-stories, stories that contain more than just a slice of the main character’s life but a whole arc. The best of these was “Above and Below,” a scarily realistic story of a young woman who goes from grad-school teaching-assistant to homelessness.

Last night, before reading the last story, I saw that this book was on Ted’s ‘have’ and ‘to-read’ list, so I dedicated my reading of “Yport” to him. Set over a month in France, a vaguely dissatisfied, anxious, wine-drinking mother, researching Guy du Maupassant, vacationing with her two young boys while her husband stays in Florida working, eventually comes to realizations about her life in Florida. I thought the story overly long, and it was my least favorite, but I never wanted to stop reading it. I don't know what Ted would’ve thought of this collection, but I know we would’ve had a a satisfying conversation.