Brawler - by Lauren Groff (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region-from New England to Florida to California-these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans' dark and light angels"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 BY NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, PEOPLE, TIME, HARPER'S BAZAAR, OPRAH DAILY, AND VULTURE

"Groff is one of this country's most successful and versatile literary figures."--New York Times

"Required reading."--Los Angeles Times

"A knockout."--Minnesota Star Tribune

A stunning, fierce collection from a master of the short story and one of the most important writers of our time

Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff's electric collection is an individual triumph, bold, agile, and packed with power. Read together, they hum in exhilarating resonance. Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region -- from New England to Florida to California -- these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans' dark and light angels.

"In every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death," one character tells us. Among those we see caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling, a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult, a mother blinded by the loss of her family, and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by the double edges of other peoples' good intentions, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.

Precise, surprising, and provocative, anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated, sometimes heartbreaking turning points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and what it takes to survive.

Review Quotes

Praise for Brawler

"Groff is one of this country's most successful and versatile literary figures... [These stories] seem like a homecoming, and honestly, something of a relief. If they have a shared theme, it is how the bedrock of family crumbles, and its members are forced to shift into new formations, occasionally tectonic."--New York Times

"Few collections have an opener as powerful and instantly classic as Brawler's...Brawler captures a towering talent and follows protagonists caught in the undertow of their messiest emotions...instead of easy epiphanies, [Groff] offers glimpses of acute clarity, meaning or happiness. They will not repeat; but they are enough to carry you through a life." --Financial Times

"Lauren Groff is one of our most acclaimed writers of fiction and one of our most dedicated and generous literary citizens...[Brawler] wallops its reader with ferocious honesty and searing emotional force even as it demonstrates artistic delicacy, intellectual subtlety, and ethical nuance." --The Boston Globe

"Lauren Groff is required reading: Her newest stories prove she's among the best in the game."--Los Angeles Times

"Returning to her most lethal form. . .Groff proves she's still at the top of her game--and then she rises higher. The nine stories in Brawler capture ordinary lives at moments of rupture and transcendence....Unremittingly life-affirming, glowing with descriptions that will make you see the world with new wonder and shot through with moments of grace that would make even Flannery O'Connor jealous." --Oprah Daily

"Anyone who picks up the book and idly starts reading the first story will be unable to stop without finishing it...Each of the nine rich tales has enough character detail and intrigue to fill a full-length novel...Groff also is hilarious, provocative and plenty of other adjectives. Long story short: Brawler is a knockout." --Minnesota Star Tribune

"Her stories wrap intricate emotional nets around the reader...Brawler is both addictive and painful, the perfect size for a short story collection, each tale its own saturated, heavy narrative, weighted down with hope and hurt."--Chicago Review of Books

"In the coiling dread and frank feminism of her work, this incandescent author makes clear with her newest fiction why she won the 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. This audacious collection surprises readers with the vivid lives few of us notice."--Kirkus (STARRED)

"A gorgeous collection about families transformed by desperate circumstances...Groff sketches her characters with scalpel-like precision...Each of these heartbreaking tales will linger in the reader's mind." --Publishers Weekly (STARRED)

"Thrillingly complex, wickedly strong girls and women populate the worlds of Groff's third story collection. In total command of her characters' nuances and the gray space they find themselves in, Groff shares brief, cryptic yet revealing notes about each story at book's end, for the cherry on top." --Booklist (STARRED)

About the Author

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of five novels, including Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and two other story collections, including Florida. Winner of The Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, she has also been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere, and her books have been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband own the independent bookstore The Lynx.