Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories by Lauren Groff

Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories Reviews

• 
  Hannah

  I love Lauren Groff. And I am trying to be better about reading other books authors I love have written, so I am currently making my way through her back catalogue and I am seriously happy about it. I think I liked this short story collection even more than her new one (which I reviewed earlier this year) and I enjoyed that one immensely. But this collection here just blew me away.
  
  I am in awe of Lauren Groff’s command of language – every single sentence ist perfectly done while not making the writing sound clinical but rather organic and captivating. I also really like the way she structures her stories – they never felt like they were working towards a punchline but rather their endings were perfectly done. Some stories I would have loved to spend more time with but I mean that as a compliment.
  
  I do have the same problem with these short stories that I had with Groff’s second collection: I am not too keen on her descriptions of overweight bodies; and the fixation on weight did not always work for me. I cannot quite put my finger on why I think she does this, but I do wish she stopped focussing on weight so much. But for me it never crossed the line into problematic territory and as such is not enough to ruin my enjoyment of these brilliant short stories.
  
  My favourite of the bunch is the last story “Delicate Edible Birds” – I loved it so much I considered giving the collection 5 stars because it ended on such a high note. Set during the Second World War (which I usually am not too keen on), this story is told from different perspectives of a group of journalists fleeing Paris on the eve of its occupation. It was harrowing and wonderful and absolutely beautifully written. Bern, the female main character, was so absolutely brilliant, I wish there was a whole book about her.
  
  You can find this review and other thoughts on books on
  my blog.
• 
  Katie

  I love Lauren Groff's writing, her way with words. I'd say the writing in these stories is perhaps more exciting than the stories themselves. Not that the stories aren't riveting. Or some of them.
  
  They are all fairly long and focus principally on the dilemmas of women. She shows herself to be versatile in terms of setting and period - one story takes place in France in 1940, another during Spanish flu epidemic in the second decade of the 20th century and another in an unnamed country at an unnamed date where there's a dictatorship (the one dud in the collection for me).
  
  A criticism might be that her men aren't as richly imagined as her women.
  
  A solid 4+ stars.
• 
  karen

  i dont usually like stories (i think a few of my reviews start out this way - ha) but i love the way this lady writes. i was hoping after the first story that they would all take place in the same town as monsters of templeton, but no luck. theres one story i definitely need to reread, but i have a feeling i will be picking this up in the future to reread all the way through.
• 
  Jeanette (Ms. Feisty)

  4.5 stars
  
  A lot of short stories consist of 10-20 pages of foreplay followed by a big cow flop of a denouement, with nary a climax in sight. Some don't even bother with a denouement, they just end abruptly, leaving the reader with the literary equivalent of lover's nuts. I have given up on many and many a short story collection for this reason.
  
  Happily, Lauren Groff is no tease. Her stories are thoroughly satisfying. She takes a little longer, 30-40 pages per story, and develops a complete picture. Many of these stories are like novels in miniature, with surprisingly well-developed characters for such a short space. These nine stories have great variety, covering a lot of different time periods and topics. Everything from 1918 New York City to World War II France to 1980s U.S.A. to an unnamed South American dictatorship.
  
  Really the only reason I didn't give five stars is that there are some cases of awkward construction within some stories. Nothing glaring, but noticeable. I have no doubt these will disappear as she hones her craft. She's this good now, I can't wait to see her get better and better!
• 
  Snotchocheez

  
  4.5 stars
  
  The acquisition of my second-favorite short story collection this year with the word "birds" in the title (!) was a decidedly bittersweet experience. I had already made acquaintance with Ms. Groff's work with her lovely, swirly, slightly out-of-focus novel of communal life in upstate New York, Arcadia, and (despite her eschewing quotation marks, a pet peeve of mine) wanted to read more from her. The very last place I'd expect books with the caliber of Ms. Groff's talent: the Dollar Tree store. Ugh. A big stack of brand new Delicate Edible Birds, which, here in mostly non-reading semi-rural Alabama, twenty-five miles from any bookstore of repute, Ms. Groff's near-masterpiece is stacked in Dollar Tree, one step away from being ground to mulch or sent to a landfill. (it almost made me want to buy the whole stack and give it to Goodwill or another thrift store...so depressing).
  
  Ms. Groff's 2009 collection absolutely needs to be read (and shelved along with my favorite "birds" short story collection read this year, Lorrie Moore's wonderful (1998) Birds of America), and not languish at Dollar Tree.
  Both books are suffused with melancholy, yet tempered with a wicked sense of humor. Both have a razor-sharp keen eye on human emotion and our frailties. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Ms. Groff gives a shout-out to Ms. Moore in her Acknowledgments page). In one respect, I found Ms. Groff's stories even better than Ms. Moore's: unlike many short story authors, who leave their stories open-ended, most of the nine stories in Delicate Edible Birds are densely packed and read like mini-novels, with a discernable story arc and a conclusion.
  
  All the stories are good; a few are terrific. Among the best: the first story "Lucky Chow Fun" (where Ms. Groff revisits tiny Templeton NY--a surrogate Cooperstown, featured in her novel The Monsters of Templeton--when a rather suspect Chinese Restaurant moves into town); the second story "L. DeBard and Aliette" (an awkward romance between a washed-up Olympian swimmer in the 1920s and his wealthy young student with polio (the only short story I can recall that's EVER made me boo-hoo)); "Blythe", (about a stay-at-home mom (a former attorney) who takes a poetry class at college to pass the time and meets a bat-shit crazy woman); and the last story, the titular "Delicate Edible Birds" (about a coterie of journalists in France during World War II who run into a creepy Nazi sympathizer in the outskirts of Orleans) are the standouts in a consistently great collection.
  
  (And yes, the only reason why this book didn't get five stars was Ms. Groff's goofy, affected decision to chuck quotation marks out the window for half of these stories. Whether or not you're like me and this bothers you, Delicate Edible Birds is still highly recommended for anyone who appreciates quality storytelling. It's a keeper.)
• 
  Sunny

  Stunning and magnificent !!!!
• 
  Teresa

  3 and 1/2 stars
  
  Because I enjoyed her first novel
  The Monsters Of Templeton, I thought I'd like this collection more than I did. While I don't think any of the stories are derivative, they seemed familiar: separate stories reminding me of
  Alice Munro and
  Amy Bloom (in theme if not style) and even
  Julie Otsuka (in style if not theme).
  
  The plots are interesting, some even inventive, though the beauties of language and character development vary from story to story. The ending of the story "Watershed" is probably the only passage I reread for the prose alone.
  
  As also demonstrated in
  The Monsters Of Templeton, first-person narration seems to be Groff's strength. I did glean from almost all the stories a nugget of theme I admired, ones that kept me thinking.
• 
  Lisa

  [3.7] I admire Lauren Groff's writing very much (My favorite is Arcadia). The stories in this diverse collection showcase her talent - most quite good, some are spectacular and a few I plodded through. The title story, about a group of war correspondents in German occupied France, is stunning.
• 
  Robert Blumenthal

  I've been a fan of Lauren Groff after reading Fates and Furies and then seeing her interviewed by Seth Myers on The Late Show. This is her initial collection of short stories, and they are simply dazzling. I would say that I probably have not read a better collection of short stories by anyone at anytime. High praise, obviously, but, IMHO, very well deserved.
  
  These stories all deal with woman characters going through some life altering experience, many involving some sort of sexuality. The characters are very well-conceived, and the plots can be simply riveting. They take place in various environs, everything from rural America to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and 1942 occupied France. There are underage prostitution rings, marital affairs, untimely deaths, immoral Nazi sympathizers, and various transformations that occur. And they are all told in very strong, exquisite prose. I cannot recommend these stories enough.
• 
  Lorna

  Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories was an engaging and riveting book of short stories from one of my favorite contemporary American authors, Lauren Groff. Since I first read her book of short stories, Florida a few years ago, I have voraciously read every book that Lauren Groff has published and I find her writing stunning. While her writing is sometimes uncomfortable, the truth of her words comes through in her beautiful prose. This was a collection of nine short stories that are very wide in scope and concept but the theme that Lauren Groff does so well is the plight of women over the years as they try to forge their way in the world in spite of stereotypes and prejudices.
  
  In this beautiful collection, I certainly have my favorites but they were all engaging. With the beautiful writing of Lauren Groff, all of the stories took on their own life. But my favorites were Sir Fleeting and Delicate Edible Birds. And a few of my favorite quotes:
  
  

  "Parnell watched as under Bern's pen the story formed, neat and relentless, threads ordered from chaos."
  
  "With the gravity of a religious ceremony, her tablemates flicked out fresh white napkins and veiled their faces with them. To hide, someone said, from the eyes of God. The porcelain girl held hers like a mantilla for a moment before she dropped it over her face. Bern did not: she watched, holding her breath, as each person reached for his own small bird, and made it disappear behind the veil. For a long time, at least fifteen minutes, there were the wet sounds of chewing, small bones cracking, a lady's voluptuous moan."
  
  "A stillness came into Bern as she observed this, a chill, as if she were watching from a very distant place. Later, she would read of what the others tasted just then; the savory fat, representing God, followed by the bitter entrails, which is the suffering of Jesus, followed by the bones, which lacerated their mouths so they tasted their own blood. All three tastes comingled became the Trinity, Bern, to whom Christianity was a gorgeous myth, like literature, saw the barbarian heart of all the beauty."
• 
  Marica

  La ragazza si farà
  I racconti sono piuttosto vari per ambientazione temporale e suggeriscono l'idea che l'autrice ami cimentarsi generosamente con figure abbastanza al di fuori dalla sua esperienza di giovane donna. Quello che accomuna i racconti sono le protagoniste femminili, animate da un'energia che è la cifra un po' ingenua e deliziosa di questa scrittrice. Ho visto LG su youtube in un reading organizzato in una libreria. Era buffa e sembra uno dei personaggi dei suoi racconti, la maestra di scuola primaria che cerca di coinvolgere il suo pubblico di bambinetti timidi.
  Che differenza con Tutto quello che è un uomo, di Szalay, appena letto: la Groff può essere meno raffinata ma è di lettura più piacevole perchè vivace e vitaminica quanto Szalay è esangue e desolato.
  E' stata accostata a Alice Munro, grandissimo complimento, io credo che l'autrice ci darà delle soddisfazioni ma la cifra mi sembra completamente diversa: la sua forza mi sembra l'empatia, mentre la Munro sembra guardare le molte sciagure umane da un'altra dimensione.
  I racconti che mi sono piaciuti di più sono Lucky Chow Fun e Majorette.
  Ambientati nella provincia americana, mi hanno fatto pensare a Joyce Carol Oates, che dipinge con maestria gotica l'anima nera dell'America. Ma queste ragazze di Lauren Groff, anche se spaventate, resistono e riescono a sfuggire alla cattiva sorte. L'ultimo racconto, quello che dà il titolo alla raccolta, mi ricorda la fuga dei parigini all'arrivo dei nazisti scritta dalla Nemirovski. Ma va bene così, la ragazza si farà, la raccolta Florida, successiva, è più bella.
• 
  Jenna 🧵

  Rated Three-Point-Five Delicate, Edible Stars! (I rounded up because that is how I roll.)
  If there is one recurring theme in this book, and as suggested by its lovely and yet dark title, that theme might be the sexual power/vulnerability of women, especially younger women. The theme is subtle, not executed in an overwrought way, but fortunately its presence is strong enough to help link together the long and quite varied (especially in terms of setting) stories in this collection. This is important, as the biggest challenge of the collection overall was reading it AS a collection. Because reading a bunch of even magnificent short stories in a row can give one a kind of post-binge-watching overdose-of-goodness headache (a binge-graine?)! So approaching the collection with the thought of following this thematic thread helped me as a reader avoid discombobulation. (But then again - it was also Awesome to read a collection of stories where the writer does not write about the same damn thing, e.g. Surburban Ennui, over and over and over again!)
  
  I still kind of wish I would have been able to savor these stories more individually or encounter them in random literary magazines rather than plowing dutifully through the lot toward the bland final destination of my library return deadline. But that being said - I never wanted to stop reading. Groff writes beautifully, with vivid imagination and, as demonstrated in
  The Monsters Of Templeton, a distinctively folkloric, storyteller's yarn-spinning approach and an eye toward the mythic dimensions of the everyday.
  
  Several stories in this collection were really excellent, haunting and memorable. If you read nothing else, read the titular story, the final one in the whole collection and pretty much a perfect work of short fiction in its characterization, plot, and setting. (The main female character, a war reporter, reminded me of the fascinating Martha Gellhorn, though that may be attributable to my obsession with the whole Hemingway-era literary scene.) The story "Fugue" was also world-class: reading it is a very, um, Fugue-like experience (go figure) in which the fragmented, dreamlike parts don't add up to their incredible whole until the very end. "Watershed" is a wonderful and wistful story of love and loss, a sort of realistic nightmare and the kind of "what if this happened?" thing we always worry about when we go to bed angry at someone. Those stories constitute my Top Three.
  
  As for the second tier - "Lucky Chow Fun" is an understated, small-town-life-tipped-on-its-head story that reads most like the first parts of The Monsters of Templeton, if you enjoy that book. "Majorette" is a sweeping, ambitious story that encompasses an entire lifetime, as do "L. DeBard and Ailette" and "Blythe." I'm generally not nuts about short stories that seem like they could/should be novellas, but I think "Majorette" is a successful and poignant twist on the Cinderella story. "Blythe" will be of interest to those who like to read books about women artists and/or mental illness/bipolar disorder; I was reminded at times of
  The Woman Upstairs. "L. DeBard and Ailette" was intriguing at times, but perhaps among the least grounded in the author's life experience (the Great Depression plus epidemic flu plus polio meets the history of professional swimming - and castration??). Thus, I wasn't entirely buying this story - but interestingly enough, not so much for these exotic aspects of the setting and plot, but rather for the inexplicable actions of a father character, which are not fully contextualized, and then the titular characters' responses to his actions also don't make sense in light of their established, strong and rebellious characters.
  
  There were only two stories that failed to draw me in. "The Wife of the Dictator" felt like an (albeit grade-A) MFA class exercise in which the student was asked to read Carolyn Forche's famous prose poem about the dictator and the ears and then imagine what the dictator's wife would have been like. Finally, "Sir Fleeting" was okay, but there was not much There there. It's partially about women and physical aging, a theme that is boring me greatly lately and that I really think we need to find a fresh and empowering take on. (And Groff is really young yet, so - forgiven!)
  
  But overall - Even the weakest stories are pretty decent, and the rest are pretty great. I'm definitely planning to keep up with Groff's future work. To recap, if you want to just dip your toes in this collection - my top recommended stories, roughly ranked, are:
  Delicate Edible Birds
  Fugue
  Watershed
  Lucky Chow Fun and/or Majorette
  Blythe
  L. DeBard and Ailette
• 
  Cynthia Paschen

  A hospice client of mine, Alice, was at the end of her life. Normally chatty, she was quiet. I was holding her hand and asking her if there was anything she wanted me to read to her. She said, "Tell me. The stories. That I. Told you." So of course, I did. Stories of her childhood, her marriage, her son, all of it. She let me know if I missed a detail or got something wrong, shaking her head, no. It's what we are measured by, what we leave behind, our stories. Alice taught me that.
  
  Lauren Groff understands the power of our stories, especially in challenging times.
  
  In "Watershed," a newlywed couple end up together at the hospital. He's in a coma. (page 186:) "I went in and began to tell stories. I had grown used to this changeling in the bed where my husband should have been, and told him stories he had told me. But I embroidered them, perverted them, willing him to wake up and correct me. The first time he killed a deer, a twelve-point buck. The first time he ever had sex with a girl (Jinny Palmer, on the Fairy Springs docks, in broad daylight). That crazy night in his freshman year in college when those boys did everything they could to get arrested, short of murder or rape, and were never caught.
  
  "Did I imagine the tightening of your thumb on my palm? The flicker across the face? The swallow? Did I imagine you would open your eyes and wheeze out, That's not the way it went, not at all? Did I hope you'd be angry when you opened your eyes and say, You have the story all wrong, Celie, you have it all wrong?
  
  "I did. I do."
• 
  Marina

  Sometimes when no novel is keeping my attention I turn to my first love in reading which is the short story. When done right, a short story is magical, better than any full length read. Yet again I found a perfect short story, it's the first one I read called "L.DeBard and Aliette" and it was outstanding, mesmerizing and gave me chills thoughout and lleft me sobbing at the end. I fully recommend this collection to everyone based on this story alone. I hope Emily picks up this collection, even if she doesn't like short stories. I have hig hopes for the rest of the collection, yet I don't want to finish reading them all because I want to draw out the pleasure.
• 
  Rebecca

  Groff should be best known for her short stories. What a clever decision to open with “Lucky Chow Fun,” a story set in Templeton, the location of her debut novel – it forms a thread of continuity between her first book and her second. Elizabeth, the only girl on the varsity swim team, comes to a number of realizations about her family and her community, including that the title Chinese restaurant is a front for a brothel that exploits trafficked women. The story becomes a wider parable about appearances and suspicion. “In these dark days, there is so much distrust in this town. … You never know quite what to think about people”. And what a brilliant last line: “I like to think it’s a happy ending, though it is the middle that haunts me.”
  
  “L. DeBard and Aliette” recasts in the notorious Héloïse and Abelard romance an Olympic swimmer and a schoolgirl in Spanish flu-plagued New York City. The other seven stories alternate between historical fiction and contemporary, the USA and abroad, first person and third person, speech marks or none. Desire and boundaries, accomplishment and escape, fear and risk are contradictory pulls. While the details have faded for me, I remember that, while I was reading them, each of these stories enveloped me in a particular world – 30 pages seems like the ideal length here to fully explore a set of characters and a situation. If I had to choose a favourite, it would be “Blythe,” about a woman who feels responsible for her alcoholic best friend.
  
  Originally published on my blog,
  Bookish Beck.
• 
  LaCitty

  Se devo essere sincera ho approcciato la lettura con un po' di preoccupazione poiché ho letto recensioni contrastanti su questa autrice e invece...
  
  Delicati uccelli commestibili è una raccolta di racconti tutti al femminile, uno più bello dell'altro. Ci sono donne forti, determinate, indipendenti, ci sono donne fragili che si lasciano andare. Alcune sono giovani, altre vecchie. Tutte hanno però una loro epifania: un momento di disvelamento e di verità, a volte amara come nel racconto che dà il titolo alla raccolta, a volte liberatoria che fa sì che le ossessioni di una vita finalmente scompaiono.
  
• 
  Renita D'Silva

  Wow! Exceptional writing! Loved every one of these beautiful vignettes into life in different countries in different eras, all exploring ordinary dilemmas during ordinary and extra-ordinary times. I think my absolute favourite of the stories is Majorette, although it is tough to choose between them as each is perfect, exquisite. So beautifully written. I'm in awe of this author's writing, her turn of phrase, her ability to make us care about every one of the characters in each of these distinct, flawless stories.
• 
  Angela

  I'm incredibly picky about what I'll read, but after her short story in The New Yorker I was hooked. It was like love at first sight with this author. Lauren Groff is easily one of the most talented writers of our time and I will read ANYTHING she writes. These stories were INCREDIBLE. I'm making all of my friends read this book immediately so that I'll have people to talk to about it.
  
  I just opened the book so that I could list my favorite stories, but they're all wonderful! I love the way she writes female characters and I have to say, the second story, L. DeBard and Aliette is one of the loveliest romances I've ever read. I don't usually like reading about love affairs, but this one is unique (which is the way I could describe each and every one of these stories.)
  
  One of the other stories, Watershed, may be one of the most perfect things I've ever read. Its ending is so universal and brilliant. And the very last story has stayed with me for days. In all honesty, as soon as I finished this book I wanted to reread it.
  
  This author takes great care in her storytelling. A few times a line would pop up and I'd think, "I always heard a writer should NEVER do that..." But no matter WHAT she writes, it flows like music. Her voice is so strong and it's obvious she writes from the heart. This is an absolutely perfect book.
• 
  Brian

  
  A first-rate collection of short fiction; wonderful storytelling, rich characters and taut writing deep with meaning. I am looking forward to reading Groff's novels following this tremendous book of stories.
• 
  Rachel

  Lauren Groff is a fantastic writer and I admire her prose. A few of these stories are really great, but others are a bit blah (though beautifully written, of course).
• 
  fatma

  Eh. Groff is a talented writer for sure, but I don't know if short stories will ever completely work for me.
  
  Let's get the obvious out of the way: Lauren Groff can write. Her sentences are elegant and light, evoking feeling and describing setting in a precise and simple way that still manages to be fresh and creative. As for the stories themselves, though, they were, as with pretty much every short story collection I read nowadays, a mixed bag. My favourite was definitely the first story, "Lucky Chow Fun," which had such a surprisingly profound ending. Another one I liked was "Watershed," which also had a fantastic ending. On that note, I want to call attention to how well Groff writes endings, perhaps too well. I usually felt at best a casual enjoyment and at worst an indifference about this collection's stories. But then I'd get to their endings and, damn, they'd make me totally reconsider the story I'd just read. I'd start second-guessing my initial impressions: did I really think the story was mediocre? Maybe I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I did? Did I enjoy it? But what about that amazing ending though? So, yeah, Groff writes the best short story endings. Regardless, I say she maybe writes endings too well because I often wished that the stories themselves were as good as their endings.
  
  While we're at it, I might as well do a quick run-through of the stories from the rest of the collection. "L. DeBard and Aliette" and "Majorette" I liked well enough, but I didn't like how similar their plot trajectories ended up feeling—they both veered into overly sentimental territory that I thought was a little too on the nose. "Blythe" was a pretty meh story, but I didn't dislike it. "The Wife of the Dictator" and "Sir Fleeting" I didn't really like. And last but not least, I outright did not like "Fugue" and "Delicate Edible Birds," the last two stories of the collection. It felt like Groff was trying to do way too much with the medium of the short story given the fact that it's, you know, a story that is SHORT.
  
  Overall not the best short story collection I've ever read*, but definitely not the worst either.
  
  *honestly I don't even know if I've ever read a short story collection that I've loved, except maybe Leigh Bardugo's The Language of Thorns
• 
  Lulufrances

  It's truly beyond me how Lauren Groff can just create the most vivid and beautiful short stories ever.
  Absolutely dazzling.
  I've said it before in another review - if there would be such a thing as choosing an author to write one's own biography, I'd choose her. She has the most brilliant and inspiring writing that reminds me of filmstills and is all I aspire to translate into my photography. (Does this make sense? Because it does to me.)
  
  Definitely one of my all time favourite writers.
• 
  Jennifer Spiegel

  I really like this book. First, there’s the title. Then, there are the stories. The title is somehow tender and savage at the same time. The stories got me. One after the other.
  
  Before my two or three readers gasp, “But she LIKES everything,” let me tell you: It’s Not True. I’m still trying to figure out the politics, if you will, of the book review. Don’t say anything if you don’t have anything nice to say? Never give a bad review? So what good is a review if it’s no review at all?
  
  I don’t know the answer to these questions. I do know that I’m talking about this one because I liked it. I guess I’d say that the stories were about the plight of the modern and contemporary heterosexual woman who is often a wife and mother. How normal. How non-alternative. I suppose that not everyone relates to them—but my guess is that everyone could. The beauty of fiction is finding the universal—what is applicable to all humans regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, background, etc.—in the particular. Right? So, these stories were particularly about women but they weren’t just for women. (I mentioned this elsewhere—in my review of Benjamin Percy’s REFRESH, REFRESH, stories that sounded like they came from a man but stories for everyone.)
  
  I would say the emotional impact of this book was immense because of this universality. In “Watershed,” the way a woman who is well-versed in contemporary mores on love and life negotiates marriage in an unexciting town really hit me hard. In “Sir Fleeting,” unrequited love that ignites in Buenos Aires under a shroud of butterflies (Groff uses the word “fritillated” in this one) is exposed as something less than magical. What happens when, over the course of one’s life, one keeps running into that mysterious object of affection? What happens when, over that long life, the love is never realized sexually despite being pregnant with sexual passion? What happens when, after the life has been lived, there is a moment when romantic idealism is knocked hard against the truth? What does it mean for that life lived in the shadow of such idealism? In the title story, not-so-hardened war reporters during the Nazi invasion of France—a woman among them!—make choices that are deceptively simple but truly define their understanding of dignity. In others, housewives thrash about in performance pieces, little girls grow up under the auspices of feminine wiles, and there’s even a castration (though you shouldn’t think it’s part of some feminist victory dance—it’s not and Groff paints a compelling tragedy).
  
  In addition to the emotional impact of the universality of these stories (how do you like that phrase?), I also found myself marking passages with lovely prose. The baby’s “cockleshell ears” in “Majorette” stopped me in their loveliness. A quick descriptive comment in “Sir Fleeting” labeling cherry trees in the winter in Central Park as “those floozies” was only one example among many of Groff’s dexterous uses of language. This was great reading.
  
  Also, I should note that Groff plays around, successfully, with perspective—in such a way that it doesn’t feel much like playing; it’s not indecipherable, but it’s natural.
  
• 
  Ally Armistead

  "Delicate Edible Birds" is one of the most enjoyable short story collections I've read in years. Lyrical, beautiful, haunting, it is one of those books whose language alone makes you slow down and savor every morsel.
  
  The stories themselves are beautiful, too, each following the arc of female protagonists in the twentieth century. The women themselves are the "delicate edible birds" to which the title refers; the medieval ages metaphor of "byrd" (as bride, as maiden) is used to explore the vulnerability of women as they break out of societal expectations and master their talents and lives. Women of younger generations outrace their mothers, unpinning themselves from patriarchy as they navigate the murky waters of love, marriage, children, and self.
  
  The strongest pieces of the collection are most definitely the title story itself, along with "L. DeBard and Aliette." The only weak story (in this reader's opinion) is "Fugue," a story that never seemed to have found itself, though the language is quite beautiful.
  
  Overall, Lauren Groff brings a freshness of language that slaps us into seeing the world again, much like the Romantic poets of yesterday. In the world of "Delicate Edible Birds," every sentence reinvents the way we see the world.
  
  A must read.
• 
  Sabrina

  This is pretty much exactly what I want out of a short story collection.
• 
  Jayme

  'In late April, the newspapers are full of news of a strange illness. The journalists try to blunt their alarm by exoticizing it, naming it Spanish influenza, La Grippe. In Switzerland, it is called Loquatte, as it it were a courtesean. In Ceylon it's the Bombay Fever, and in Britain the Flanders Grippe. The Germans, whom the Allies blame for this disease, call it Blitzkatarrh. The disease is as deadly as that name sounds.
  
  'Americans do not pay attention. They watch Charlie Chaplin and laugh until they cry. They read the sports pages and make bets on when the war will be over. And if a few healthy soldiers suddenly fall ill and die, the Americans blame it on exposure to tear gas.'
  
  I love this excerpt from L. Debard and Aliette. It definitely hits different today than if I'd read it in 2009 when this was published.
  
  I'm assuming Groff must be a bit of a history buff. The detail that she includes in her historical fiction is so beautifully done. This piece, as well as the titular story, Delicate Edible Birds, were both my favourites and both historical, the late teens/early twenties and WWII respectively. Not sure why, but I find it more impressive to write a historical short story well. And Groff's style, floral and peppered with classic terms, fits the genre perfectly.
• 
  Alan

  Highly professional, complex stories, like mini novels. You have to admire the breadth of imagination, with stories set around the world (although mainly US) and in different times throughout the 20th century. Character studies with intricate plotting (so much so I got a bit lost at points - but that may have been because the copy I got out of the library was large print, which, oddly, I found difficult to read). Strangely I watched an episode of 'Succession' where a character, showing off, takes a relative to a restaurant where they have l'ortolan, the delicate edible birds of the title story which I read in bed that night. A rare coincidence.
• 
  Linda Robinson

  The war in my head reading this collection was waged between the remarkable prose and its excellent arrangement and the idea of women as delicate edible birds. The words-arranged with architectural artistry as the tree to support the avian protagonists-are marvels; soaring, ephemeral and gently waving in the breeze. But that breeze! Under the words, under the trees, in the dirt and mud is the dichotomy of mother/wife/community member and raving, raw artisan- the wind stirred by this inner struggle is fetid. Blythe is a superb example of this. What do you do with the diseased part of yourself that's manifested in your best friend? Some of the metaphors are bludgeons, a weirdly disjointed sense against the curliques coiled around the story leads. These are delicate edible birds the size of pterodactyls. It will take a while to subdue the beasts.
  
• 
  Catherine

  I don't usually read short story collections, but
  Arcadia was so beautifully written, I decided to give this one a try. It killed me. So beautiful and many of them so sad. Wow. Wow. Wow.
  
  Usually I plow through books, gorging myself, because I'm a book glutton. But with this book, I took my time, savoring one story per night, fully immersing myself in each world Groff created.
  
  My favorites are "L. Debard and Aliette," "Majorette," "Blythe," and the final title story which just gutted me.