For the God of Love, for the Love of Florida

As Florida enters peak hurricane season, Cherith King reflects on Lauren Groff’s 2018 depiction of her home state and its residents.

By Cherith KingSeptember 1, 2024

I READ LAUREN GROFF’S Florida (2018) in the middle of a Category 4 hurricane. I finished the vibrant story collection under a flashlight beam while the wind whipped my walls and rain pounded my window. In the humidity of my dark room, I witnessed Groff take Florida’s wet heat, brutal ecosystem, and strangeness, and portray it in a way I’d never seen before. The minute I read Groff describe the state’s summers as “a slow hot drowning,” I knew I had found a voice that understood Florida’s true form.

In 2018, for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Joseph Peschel declared Florida “as fine and beautifully crafted as any fiction [Groff] has written.” Groff’s portrait of Florida is a wild one, the most capable setting for “personal calamities and mini-apocalypses,” as Peschel puts it. The single narrative from the collection that has remained clearest in my mind after years is “For the God of Love, for the Love of God.” In such a short span, Groff weaves an intricate thread with an ensemble of distinct characters, all of whom are introduced within the first few paragraphs.

The character Amanda, like me, grew up in Florida and has lived her adult life largely disappointed in herself for never leaving it. Amanda vacations in France to reconnect with Genevieve, her childhood friend who married rich and resides in the French countryside. Groff reveals early in the story that Genevieve is cheating on her wealthy husband, Manfred, with Amanda’s husband, Grant. To top it off, Genevieve’s four-year-old son, Leo, is obsessed with his “Aunt Manda.” While the secret affair simmers, Groff continues to add layers to the relationship by slowly revealing the factors for Amanda and Genevieve’s nuanced dynamic. The two women share an affection for each other that only longtime friends can, but alongside that love is jealousy and competition. The narrator sees from Amanda’s perspective: “She’d become used to seeing Genevieve as her own dumb daydream. The better her.”

All the characters’ relationships are dense with histories that are seamlessly communicated despite taking place offstage. Groff reveals the sore spots in the sharply written small talk and passive conversations. Eventually, the brooding tension explodes at a dinner party while Mina, Amanda’s niece who came to France to babysit Leo, sings “Au Clair de la Lune” to him. With Mina’s voice in the background, the four adults listen as Amanda incorrectly explains the story behind the song, until Manfred admonishes her naivete by revealing the much darker, truer interpretation of the song. The story closes from Mina’s perspective, as she is the only person far enough removed to see the four adults clearly. Groff writes, “As [Mina] walked toward them, she saw how these people at the table had stopped climbing, how they were teetering on the precipice.” Groff encompasses the buildup to the storm, sustaining anticipation until the very last page. “For the God of Love, for the Love of God,” is vibrant and full—there’s a carousel, a lightning storm, a Peeping Tom, a dead falcon, a know-it-all little kid who sets the dead falcon on fire, and a “universality” so strong it sticks.

I’m convinced I was born with apathy for this state. I grew up with an exclusive appreciation for the United States’ most glorified cities and dissatisfaction with my hometown. I have been completely disinterested in learning more about Florida through another person’s eyes; my experience living here has been enough. Florida is too hot, too humid, and too expensive for a state that is sinking, succumbing to an iguana takeover, and—its most widely known endeavor in recent years—banning more books than any other state. Groff, who recently opened her independent bookstore, the Lynx, with the mission of combating book bans, has stated that she “did not love the state of Florida for the first 10 years [she] lived here.” Now, though, the care and respect Groff holds for this place is visible when she writes. To quote Peschel, “Groff’s stories are exciting, her language rich and evocative.” The magic of Florida is the closeness Groff creates with writing that entices and mystifies the state into something special and unfamiliar. What is hidden doesn’t get explicitly revealed, but it is there, in the bushes, looking directly at you.