Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough
(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Florida
By: Lauren Groff
Narrated by: Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff (Author, novelist)
“Florida” is a series of well written short stories. The binding theme of the author’s stories is her view of life. As Lauren Groff makes clear in her former book, “Fates and Furies”, there is little difference between the sexes. Women may give birth, but children are children who need care. The truth is men, more often than women, physically leave their children. Most women stay. Groff suggests it is not necessarily because women want to stay but they have fewer alternatives.
Once born, most children are loved and held close while some are abandoned physically and/or emotionally by their parents.
Groff infers women most often stay, but not because of a maternal instinct. A woman can choose to abandon their children just like men, but they may have grown to love their children. On the other hand, they may fear the social recrimination if they leave like fathers. Groff seems to infer women are as capable of leaving their children as men, but society treats the sexes unequally. In many ways, Groff wants equal treatment of men and women, but her observations are a harsh judgement of human beings.
Groff implies societal expectation is different for women than men.
Beyond strength differences, Groff’s stories show there are no differences between men and women. A woman is as likely to pursue sex as a man for the same purpose. Groff suggests there is no difference between men and women when it comes to desire for sex.
Groff tells a story of a violent storm that interrupts a single woman’s night out. Groff’s character is trolling a bar for a conjugal companion for the night. The violent storm leads to a dangerous interlude with a man that might as easily rape her as help her survive the storm. The man chooses to drink himself into a stupor and the woman survives the encounter without being raped.
Groff shows poverty is as crushing for women as men.
Both men and women can quit working or lose a job and devolve into homeless vagrants. Either can choose to become thieves, sexual consorts, or menial laborers to survive at the bottom of society.
Groff’s stories may appall some listeners, but she offers a point of view that strikes at the heart of sexual inequality.
Emotional human attachment is important in every story Groff writes. She is not suggesting either men or women are incapable of real love of each other and their children. She is arguing there are no intellectual, or emotional differences between the sexes.
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