Brawler by Lauren Groff

The last time I read a short story collection that moved me as much as Brawler did, I was reading Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. Brawler pretty much ripped out my heart, mended it and shoved it back in my chest, leaving me changed. After The Monsters of Templeton and Brawler, Lauren Groff has quickly become an instant favorite author, and I am eager to make my way back through her other works.

Brawler is made up of nine short stories that vary in themes, time period and settings. These stories are a reflection of the hardships we face in life, how we meet them, how we fail against them, how we rise against them. It’s a poignant collection that illustrates a vast array of characters who are trying to figure out how to survive.

My favorite story in this collection was ‘Birdie’ which shows a group of friends showing up at the hospital to reminisce as they say goodbye to their friend Birdie who is dying of cancer. This story shows one woman in particular, Nic, come to terms with all the decisions she made or didn’t make that cost her moments of living. Or the ones that gave her it. This was a heartfelt story and shows what it means to be friends, together and lost and together again.

‘The Wind’ and ‘To Sunland’ absolutely broke my heart. I don’t know that I can say too much more on those two.

‘Between the Shadow and Soul’ is the story of Eliza and her husband Willie. It’s a story that shows how age can sometimes steal living from us and brief moments of connection, lust or intimacy, can bring us back to life. But sometimes those moments aren’t enough and sometimes they are. Another tear-jerker for sure.

‘Brawler’ features such a tough young girl who is putting off something that will change her life forever. A story like this will affect you so much because it looks like reality on the page.

‘What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf’ is such a wonderully written story, that tells a story of Chip, a failed banker try to make sense of his life, only to carry on having a relationship with a woman who doesn’t see their attachment as much else outside of sex. This story is volatile and frustrating. Frustrating because while we can understand the narrator, it is a narrator you want to shake and scream at to come to his senses.

‘Under the Wave’ broke my heart too. This one came close to having me set the book down to read another day. I didn’t know if I could move past the harrowing heartache of this one.

Which is why the story immediately after it ‘Such Small Islands’ didn’t impact me as hard. I want to go back and reread this one because I was still existing in the story that came before it.

And then we get to the final story in the book, ‘Annunciation’ which damn near killed me (not to be too dramatic). The narrator of this story abandons her life after graduating college, not telling her mother where she is going and winds up in California. She stays in a converted pool house while working at an office that is working on digitizing hundreds of social worker case files. The narrator makes a mistake that will change a few lives forever.

I’m trying not to get too deep into the plot of any one of these stories because it was so so good. It was an experience for me to spend time in these stories, with these characters. I’m not sure how one recovers from this? So I just downloaded another of her books to my library app.

That should do the trick.