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 single shared theme: the ceaseless battle between the dark and light in all of us.
Among those caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling; a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult; a mother blinded by the loss of her family; and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by human fallibility, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.
Precise, surprising and provocative, anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated fracture points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and survival. It is a timeless, stunning achievement from one of the very best short story writers working today.
Lauren Groff is the author of six books, including Matrix, Florida, and Fates and Furies, all of which were finalists for the National Book Award. Her work has won the Story Prize, the Paul Bowles Prize, and France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, and has been shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Her work has been published in thirty-six languages.
Read: The Pain Cave, Granta
First lines: The house of my childhood was thickly haunted, so we spent what time we could outdoors. This is where, I believe, the rite came from, a way to mark our joy at being released from the house’s chill and eerie confinement and set loose into the warming spring.