num_pages: 306
description: In Sir Fleeting a Midwestern farm girl on her honeymoon in Argentina falls into lifelong lust for a French playboy. In Blythe an attorney who has become a stay-at-home mother takes a night class in poetry and meets another full-time mother one whose charismatic brilliance changes everything. In The Wife of the Dictator that eponymous wife (brought back . . . from [the dictator's] last visit to America) grows more desperately menacingly isolated every day. In Delicate Edible Birds a group of war correspondents--a lone high-spirited woman among them--falls sudden prey to a brutal farmer while fleeing Nazis in the French countryside. In Lucky Chow Fun Groff returns us to Templeton the setting of her first book for revelations about the darkness within even that idyllic small town. In some of these stories enormous changes happen in an instant. In others transformations occur across a lifetime--or several lifetimes. Throughout the collection Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations. Crime is a motif--sex crimes a possible murder crimes of the heart. Love troubles recur--they're in every story--love in alcoholism in adultery in a flood even in the great flu epidemic of 1918. Some of the love has depths which are understood too late; some of the love is shallow and also understood too late. And mastery is a theme--Groff's women swim and baton twirl become poets or try and try again to achieve the inner strength to exercise personal freedom. Overall these stories announce a notable new literary master. Dazzlingly original and confident Delicate Edible Birds further solidifies Groff's reputation as one of the foremost talents of her generation.
language: English
title: Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories
publisher: Hachette Books