Barbarism in this Beauty

Buntings and bourbon fly through Buenos Aires and small town New York. A teenager looks for romance in a Chinese restaurant/brothel, an invalid heiress elopes with her swim instructor, and a majorette catches herself on fire. These stories have alighted in Lauren Groff’s Delicate Edible Birds.

In the title story, a female journalist must evacuate with a team of male reporters during World War II. She is nicknamed “l’ ortolan” for the delicacy diners devour while veiling their faces with a napkin. She herself proves to be a dish when she and her colleagues are captured by a sadistic German.

When you’ve finished these stories, you’ll want to turn to Groff’s first book – The Monsters of Templeton. Truly epic in heft and scope, Monsters is a story of origin. One woman researches the town lore to discover her father’s identity. In doing so, she unravels a complicated family tree with chapters giving voice to minor characters from her past.

Mythical Realism. I don’t know if this is a thing, but Lauren Groff should be the poster child. Her work contains the same unsettling plot twists you’ve come to expect from stories of metamorphosis while her prose may prove as timeless as Sisyphus’ task.