Items related to Delicate Edible Birds
Lauren Groff presents nine stories of astonishing insight and variety, each revealing a resonant drama within the life of a twentieth-century American woman.
In "Sir Fleeting," a Midwestern farm girl on her honeymoon in Argentina falls into lifelong lust for a French playboy. In "Blythe," an attorney who has become a stay-at-home mother takes a night class in poetry and meets another full-time mother, one whose charismatic brilliance changes everything. In "The Wife of the Dictator," that eponymous wife ("brought back...from [the dictator's] last visit to America") grows more desperately, menacingly isolated every day. In "Delicate Edible Birds," a group of war correspondents—a lone, high-spirited woman among them—falls prey to a brutal farmer while fleeing Nazis in the French countryside. And in "Lucky Chow Fun," Groff returns to Templeton, the setting of her first book, for revelations about the darkness within even that idyllic small town.
In some of these stories, enormous changes happen in an instant. In others, transformations occur across a lifetime—or several lifetimes. Throughout the collection, Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations. Crime is a motif—sex crimes, a possible murder, crimes of the heart. Love troubles occur in every story—love in alcoholism, in adultery, in a flood, even in the great flu epidemic of 1918. Some of the love has depths that are understood too late; some of the love is shallow and also understood too late. And mastery is a theme—Groff's women swim and twirl batons, become poets, or try and try again to achieve the inner strength to exercise personal freedom.
Overall, these stories announce a notable new literary master. Dazzlingly original and confident, Delicate Edible Birds will further Groff's growing reputation as one of the foremost talents of her generation.
In "Sir Fleeting," a Midwestern farm girl on her honeymoon in Argentina falls into lifelong lust for a French playboy. In "Blythe," an attorney who has become a stay-at-home mother takes a night class in poetry and meets another full-time mother, one whose charismatic brilliance changes everything. In "The Wife of the Dictator," that eponymous wife ("brought back...from [the dictator's] last visit to America") grows more desperately, menacingly isolated every day. In "Delicate Edible Birds," a group of war correspondents—a lone, high-spirited woman among them—falls prey to a brutal farmer while fleeing Nazis in the French countryside. And in "Lucky Chow Fun," Groff returns to Templeton, the setting of her first book, for revelations about the darkness within even that idyllic small town.
In some of these stories, enormous changes happen in an instant. In others, transformations occur across a lifetime—or several lifetimes. Throughout the collection, Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations. Crime is a motif—sex crimes, a possible murder, crimes of the heart. Love troubles occur in every story—love in alcoholism, in adultery, in a flood, even in the great flu epidemic of 1918. Some of the love has depths that are understood too late; some of the love is shallow and also understood too late. And mastery is a theme—Groff's women swim and twirl batons, become poets, or try and try again to achieve the inner strength to exercise personal freedom.
Overall, these stories announce a notable new literary master. Dazzlingly original and confident, Delicate Edible Birds will further Groff's growing reputation as one of the foremost talents of her generation.
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Product Description:
Lauren Groff's critically acclaimed "The Monsters of Templeton" was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers 2008, and critics hailed her as an enormous talent and a writer to watch. In "Delicate Edible Birds", she fulfils that promise. "Delicate Edible Birds" includes nine stories of vastly different styles and structures. "L. De Bard and Aliette" recreates the tale of Abelard and Heloise in New York during the 1918 flu epidemic; "Lucky Chow Fun" returns to Templeton, the setting of Groff's debut novel, for a contemporary account of what happens to outsiders in a small, insular town; the title story of "Delicate Edible Birds" is a harrowing, powerfully moving drama about a group of war correspondents, a lone woman among them, who fall prey to a frightening man in the French countryside while fleeing the Nazis. With a dazzling array of voices and settings, "Delicate Edible Birds" will cement Lauren Groff's reputation as one of the foremost talents of her generation.
About the Author:
Lauren Groff was born in Cooperstown, New York. She has a BA from Amherst College and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has won fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center and Yaddo. Her debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton, was a New York Times Bestseller and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers 2008. She lives in Gainesville, Florida and is at work on her second novel.
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- PublisherVoice
- Publication date2025
- ISBN 10 1401341209
- ISBN 13 9781401341206
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages320
- Rating
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