This was my first real experience of Groff. The final story in this collection, Yport, was included in "Granta 139: Best of Young American Novelists 3" which I read several months ago, but that didn’t help me much because it has been so majorly re-worked by the time it gets into this collection that it is almost a new piece (same basic story, but significantly edited): I was comparing the two for the first few paragraphs, but the changes are so numerous and significant that I gave up and I'm not sure how much the versions diverged in the end.

The state of Florida is the unifying element in all the stories presented here, although this doesn’t mean that all the stories are set in Florida, simply that all the protagonists have a connection with the place. Salvador, for example, is set in Brazil as the protagonist explores an unknown city (in a rather dissolute fashion, it has to be said). And Yport that I have already mentioned is set in France where a woman travels to the town to continue her research in Guy de Maupassant. But many of the stories do take place in Florida. It doesn’t come over as the sunshine state! It seems that along with lurking hurricanes and far too many snakes for my personal taste, there are a lot of sad and lonely people and a fair amount of poverty. In one story, a woman sits out a hurricane in her house, in another a woman struggles with her snake-obsessed husband. In the opening story, a woman wanders the streets at night to help her stress levels and observes her neighbourhood.

In many of the stories, I admired the writing. Groff has an observant eye and an interesting turn of phrase. The individual stories are often well-told with occasional flashes of humour. There are some links between the stories with images or brief moments recalling earlier parts of the book. But the overall impression, of women who are depressed or struggling with life in some way or other, gets a bit heavy if you read the book cover to cover as I have done. I also found the way that so many of the stories ended very suddenly and often by leaping off at a tangent rather repetitive in the end (stories seem to suddenly leap forward for a glimpse of the character decades later, for example, or, in some cases, jump into what almost seems to be a different story just for the final paragraph). Perhaps this is a book that is better enjoyed by reading one story at a time?

Overall, I enjoyed the writing and I liked several of the stories, but I found the complete collection rather hard work to get through. From my perspective, I would advise readers to take their time with this and spread it out.

Lauren Groff has written a superb collection, often startlingly spare, about people in Florida, about those with lives connected, in some way, to the Sunshine State. The prose is evocative, often zooming in on disjointed lives, of those living in parts of the state unfamiliar to the masses.

In ‘Salvador’, the plot is transferred to Brazil and the somewhat odd goings-on with its protagonist as she explores an unfamiliar city. In another story, a former university lecturer bums her way through life, avoiding former students and seeking out life’s answers in menial jobs. The final story, ‘Yport’ and also the longest, takes place in France, in Nantes, Normandy and Paris. In this tale, the unnamed mother, and her two sons, are in France for the summer, escaping the Floridian heat and, supposedly, researching Guy De Maupassant but getting little done.

Having not read Groff before, I am now keen to get stuck into ‘Fates and Furies’. I admired the author’s often amusing and simplistic prose and want more.

After a reading a couple of novels in succession with complicated plots, I was delighted that this collection of short stories floated to the front of my bookshelf and I could dip into it in bursts. That’s not to say that some of the stories didn’t leave a deep impression on me, short as they are.

I have visited Florida several times but didn’t see the Florida depicted here. The author paints a dark, sweltering, edgy atmosphere. At the heart of many of the stories is a feeling of lives sinking into one swamp or another. In the more unnerving of them, it is children who are brought to the brink of neglect and danger. Plenty of insight into motherhood, all of which I enjoyed very much.

Some lovely writing. To give a flavour of its calibre, memorable images include:

‘… my children were endlessly fascinating, two petri dishes growing human cultures.…’

‘Mostly, however, I see the mothers I know in glimpses, bent like shepherdess crooks, scanning the floor for tiny Legos or half-chewed grapes or the people they once were, slumped in the corners.’

‘I thought of the waves of sleep rushing through their brains, washing out the tiny unimportant flotsam of today so that tomorrow’s heavier truths could wash in.’

‘She’d never met a child with beady eyes before. Beadiness arrives after long slow ekes of disappointment, usually in middle age.’

Highly recommended.

For those who are unfamiliar of the landscape and society of Florida, Lauren Groff's collection of stories is enticing and varied. Ranging from the usual depictions of alligators, to the atypical descriptions of those who just want to get away, Groff attempts to show the various characters found in the sweltering heat and stormy climes of southern USA.

I particularly enjoyed the story of the mother who takes her two young sons to France to escape the tropical summers and her restless life. It is detailed and you get a sense of her edginess throughout, worried that something may happen to her children or to have an unpleasant encounter with their overbearing landlord.

My only gripe would be that because each story is not clearly signposted, the flow of the stories become confusing and it takes a minute to realise you've begun a whole new chapter. It is a bit jarring, so shorter stories became completely unmemorable as a result. However, it is a pleasant read overall, I enjoyed her writing style.