Florida by Lauren Groff

Florida

Lauren Groff

Short stories which crackle and fizz in your mind like the embers of a Floridian beach party. All have some link to the State, however tenuous, and all bring home the fragility and tenacity of the human spirit under direst stress and abuse. I challenge you to read more than one story a day, you'll need at least that long for it to percolate your imagination.

Extract
She can't stop the thought that children born now will be the last generation of humans. Her sons have known only luck so far, though suffering will surely come for them. She feels it nearing, the midnight of humanity. Their world is so full of beauty, the last terrible flash of beauty before the long darkness.
Refusing the pleasure of a dusk like tonight's with its cool wind, its sunset, its ocean, its carousel, its ice cream, strikes her as profoundly immoral.
Now a hunger that cannot quite be located in the body comes over her, a sense of yearning, for what? Maybe for kindness, for a moral sense that is clear and loud and greater than she is, something that can blanket her, no, no, something in which she can hide for a minute and be safe.
Parallels
  • The Blue by Maggie Gee
  • What the Birds See by Sonya Hartnett
  • Assorted Fire Events by David Means