Brawler

These are stories of fracture and survival, of the fulcrums on which lives tilt. On finishing Brawler, the world felt more densely peopled, richer with stories. Groff reminds us of the myriad human galaxies all around us, spinning off brightly into the dark.

Melissa Harrison

Groff's first short-story collection since 2018's Florida features nine tales in which characters grapple with their better and worse instincts.

Financial Times Weekend

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)

You'll want to put this short-story collection at the top of your list. The characters you'll meet here balance responsibility with human fallibility across locations, years, and identities. You'll walk away feeling more connected to other people, all of whom are simply trying, and with more compassion for yourself.

Harper's Bazaar

Nine tales with a common theme: characters' grappling with their better and worse instincts. Groff has a gift for capturing human nature and the compulsions that drive us.

Financial Times

I'm in awe at how Groff conjures a whole world in each brilliant story.

Claire Fuller

It's truly a joy to be alive at the same time as someone whose work is so consistently excellent.

Evening Standard

Few collections have an opener as powerful and instantly classic as Brawler's 'The Wind' ... For most writers, [it] would be an impossible act to follow, and yet every story here continues a conversation about secrets, hopes, fears and the persistence of love in the face of it all. ... Brawler captures a towering talent and follows protagonists caught in the undertow of their messiest emotions. As one character says, "in every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death". Groff’s bargain with the reader is simple, and impossible to refuse: instead of easy epiphanies, she offers glimpses of acute clarity, meaning or happiness. They will not repeat; but they are enough to carry you through a life.

Financial Times