Master of the Form

Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories by Loren Groff.  Hachette Books.  306 pp. *****

Before reading Lauren Groff’s first book of short stories, I saw her as a novelist who had apprenticed on the shorter form.  Her first novel was big in various ways, did well both commercially and critically.  She followed with two massive, ambitious books, one a portrait of a marriage (and, coincidentally, of a creative genius), the other about a utopian community from the Sixties.  In the meantime she kept up with the shorter form, publishing a later book of stories that was excellent, then two novels that weren’t so blockbusterish.  I figured she was biding time before the next big effort.  And I thought that this first volume of stories, published as her second book, would be apprentice work, what prepared her for The Monsters of Templeton.

I got that wrong.  Delicate Edible Birds is a superb collection by a woman who reads like an established writer; there’s no apprentice work here.  One story takes place in Templeton, the fictional town that she uses as a stand-in for her hometown of Cooperstown.  But the others are all over the map, historically and geographically; it’s an extremely imaginative collection.  And the fact of the matter is that, if I look at her work as a whole, what I like best are not the blockbusters (though I enjoyed them, and have a real affection for Arcadia, which focused on my generation), but the more recent novels, Matrix and The Vaster Wilds, which are not as ambitious and large in scope as the other novels, but seem deeper.  The friend who originally recommended her work recently said he thought her most successful work is the stories and mid-length novels, and I agree.  The tale of her career is hardly told, of course; she’s only 45 years old.  I feel sure she’ll continue to explore both the novel and the shorter form.

I can’t get my mind off the title story, which closes the volume.  It concerns a group of journalists who are covering World War II, and who are—though they’re intrepid people who have seen plenty of violence and bloodshed—in a bit of a panic because the Germans have just invaded France, and they, along with a number of refugees, are trying to move to a safe place ahead of the invasion.  They’re traveling together in a jeep, knocking back a bottle of Scotch which the most interesting of the characters—and the lone woman, named Bern—appropriated from a bar.  There’s something romantic and daring and Hemingwayish about these folks (I even wondered if Bern was modeled on Martha Gellhorn, his third wife and superior as a war correspondent), and when they run out of gas they seem nevertheless to be in luck, because they’re near a small homestead.  They ask the inhabitants—a father, two sons, and an old woman who seems to be a grandmother—for food, and get a warm reception, though the men had shown up at the door carrying rifles.

But of all things—and I need to give a spoiler alert here, though the whole story hinges on this turn of events—the father is a Nazi sympathizer.  He was a prisoner of war during World War I, treated well by the Germans (!), and has always admired them, especially Hitler.  He’s been awaiting this day for years.  He was happy to give them the meal, and will give them food for their journey and even gasoline, but he doesn’t want to be paid in French currency (he figures it will soon be worthless), doesn’t even watch the gold watch, the silver cigarette case, and other treasures they offer.  He’s a widower—his wife died some years before—and a man of strong passions; what he wants is one night with this beautiful young woman, such a fine example of the Aryan race (actually, Bern is a Jew, but doesn’t mention that).  If she agrees to that, they can go on their way with ample supplies.  If not, he’ll lock them up in the barn and turn them over to the Nazis.  The choice is hers.  Or theirs.

Bern is no blushing violet; she’s slept with a number of men, including two in her entourage, but she finds this man, and his politics, revolting.  And she’s a tough feisty human being.  She won’t let anyone push her around.

I won’t continue.  I’ve given enough away already.  But talk about an imagination for intriguing stories.  Lauren Groff has that in spades.

I shouldn’t go on so much on one story, though I was mesmerized; probably I would have felt the same way about whatever story closed the volume.  The focus in general is on women: a drum majorette in a working class family in Pennsylvania; the wife of a dictator; two women who meet when they both, in act of desperation take a poetry class, one of whom goes on to become a famous performance artist; a romance that goes spectacularly right, then goes spectacularly wrong, all in the space of 33 pages; a fascinating story about a woman’s lifelong friendship with a true Don Juan, a genuinely seductive man, who does not, alas, age gracefully.

The truth is that already, in her late twenties, Lauren Groff was an accomplished writer and artist; her first published story, about the unlikely discovery of a Chinese brothel in her hometown of Templeton, and the fallout when the town discovers the women there kept a list of clients, seems the work of a veteran.  There are few writers who seem equally accomplished in the short story and the novel, but I put Lauren Groff in that group.  Florida is perhaps a stronger collection of stories, focused on that one place, but this one is mighty good.  Lauren Groff, I greet you in the middle of a brilliant career which I should have started following a long time ago.