First published in my Patreon newsletter: June 2023
Florida was recommended to me a good year or so back now when I was looking for short story recommendations, it came alongside the suggestion of Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, which, if you haven’t read it, is fantastic. And so, without realising, I had drawn links between these two collections and I put off buying Florida because Machado’s sublime collection was still sitting with me. Thus, I am lucky (a refrain in this newsletter is seems) that a very good friend gifted me Florida for my birthday in May.
Once I owned the book I wanted to read it, forgetting how I’d worried it would cow beside Her Body and Other Parties. I was not disappointed. If anything, I enjoyed Florida more due to Groff’s marrying of womanhood and parenthood with storms, Florida and danger. Where Machado’s stories are steeped in lust, ache, sexuality and sensuality, Groff’s are narratives buried within the human psyche clawing their way out, breaking through the epidermis, pale-faced, screaming into the wind. Florida is superb, visceral and many of the stories are unforgettable in the sheer audacity they have to be human and honest. Groff reminds every reader we are people contained in a vast world with vast worlds contained inside us all.
Kristiana Reed 
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