Boca Raton (Warmer, #2) by Lauren Groff

Boca Raton (Warmer, #2) Reviews

• 
  Barbara

  “Boca Raton” is another short story from the Warmer Collection. Then Warmer Collection are visions of a conceivable tomorrow by different literary authors. In this one, Lauren Groff writes her version. All short stories I’ve listened to in this series recognizes climate change. Groff places her story in Boca Raton Fl, and her protagonist, Ange, is a single sleep deprived working mother. She participated in an eco-friendly cleanup at her beach and learns more of the rising water levels and beach erosion. Her worry results in sleepless nights. She’s a librarian who is doing research for the university.
  
  Because I’m a huge fan of Groff’s, I listened to it twice. The first time I was left with “confused puppy dog” face. The second time I listened, I understood a bit more about what she was trying to say(I think). In this case, sleepless nights and worry about our environment leads to a woman’s professional nightmare.
  
• 
  Gerhard

  Another author whom I am embarrassed to admit I have not read yet. The second entry in Amazon’s Warmer collection is a completely different beast to The Way the World Ends by Jess Walter, but equally as good in its own right. I wonder if this particular short story forms part of Groff’s collection called Florida, which gets a plug at the end?
  
  It is a darkly modulated tale about single mother Ange who finds herself haunted by a vision of a dead nest of chicks she stumbles across during a creek clean-up with her daughter and a bunch of volunteers. The chicks had been fed plastic by a parent in a desperate bid to keep them alive.
  
  Ange finds herself haunted by this vision, which overlays her ordinary life like a shroud she peers through at an increasingly incomprehensible and bewildering world. This simple story builds quietly to a devastating but ambiguous climax that is all the more powerful for its lack of resolution.
• 
  Juli

  Boca Raton is the story of a woman's descent into madness because she fears the effects of global climate change. It's the 2nd of 7 stories in the Warmer collection from Amazon Originals/Audible.
  
  It all starts when Ange finds dead baby birds on the beach, killed by little bits of plastic they consumed. Then it dawns on her....global warming will destroy the wildlife habitats in Florida, destroy farms that grow food and ultimately destroy her young daughter's life along with millions of others -- humans and animals alike. She starts to drink, growing increasingly paranoid and emotionally overwhelmed.
  
  While I understand the intent of this story and the importance of being good stewards of this planet....I didn't like this story. I just don't really enjoy stories that have no hope...where the characters have no chance. The main character is so out of control....her own descent into mental instability starts destroying her daughter's life...and her own....way before global warming would have had any effect.
  
  I listened to the audible audio version of this short story/novella. Dana Rosenberg narrates the story quite well. Rosenberg skillfully brings across the panic, emotion and fear of the main character. The audio is only about an hour long, so it's easy listening length.
  
  I'm two stories into this collection and not really feelin' it. So far, the stories are thinly veiled commentary on modern issues rather than tales about climate change. I'm on overload when it comes to social commentary at the moment. Because the stories are short, I will keep listening and see if any of these tales actually ends up being predominantly about climate change. So far.....not.
• 
  Misty

  Five gold stars for this author’s obvious ability to write. Subtract one of said stars for my own inability to “get it” (unfair, but damnit it’s my review). And then there were four. Take away another because, as I may have mentioned I DONT GET IT! I’m sure there’s an extended metaphor lurking behind the ambiguity, but I’ll be damned if I can find it....and I mean, really, I was always a prize “Where’s Waldo” competitor. That leaves us with three lovely, tin stars dipped in cheap gold plate, representing the promise of at least a plausible plot at the hands of a capable author. Nope...and it’s here that I offer a brief summary: woman is clearly aware of the effects of global warming; woman overreacts to a certainly sad but not life-altering event; woman goes mad leaving her young daughter parentless. Yep, another star shoots through the sky and blinks out unceremoniously, it’s death long past by the time we realize the light has been extinguished. Had I been able to predict that this particular crash and burn was on the horizon I would have given up trying to finish this thankfully short piece of tomfoolery. I’ll leave it at two rather tiny brassy stars, because, seriously, there’s talent here, even it it’s buried under a monolith constructed of ridiculous characters, an absurd plot and an overuse of tone in an attempt to create a sense of desperation. See? The melodrama must have been contagious.
• 
  Kim Lockhart

  Frightening and visceral essay about the gathering dangers of Climate Change.
• 
  Kandice

  This final installment of the Warmer series on Amazon Prime was my favorite. Not because of the plot, but because of the writing. Groff made me experience the disgust of litter, feel the hopelessness of insomnia and the loneliness of the single parent. In 31 pages.
• 
  Alysha DeShaé

  This story focuses more on the emotional upheaval when you're confronted with some of the horrors of pollution and climate change when added on to a life already littered with a ton of stressful issues. Still powerful, but differently so. This one really seems to hammer home the need to focus on mental health.
• 
  Alan Teder

  Pollution Derangement Syndrome
  Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook edition (October 2018)
  
  This short story is very much a piece with those in Lauren Groff's collection
  Florida (published June 2018) which I did read shortly around the time of its release, but which I found too depressing to review at the time. Boca Raton has librarian and mother Ange spiralling into depression after finding a nest of dead birds during a Girl Scout Troop trash cleanup with her daughter Lily. The mother bird had been feeding the chicks plastic garbage. After the experience, all things bird and egg related begin to nauseate Ange and she becomes an insomniac. Fellow librarian Phyllis tries to counsel her.
  
  The theme here was out of sync with the cli-fi theme of the Warmer Collection series as it dealt primarily with a depression related to pollution rather than climate change.
  
  Boca Raton is one of the 7 short stories included in the
  Warmer Collection, a series of climate-related fiction released October 30, 2018 from Amazon Original Stories. Fear and hope collide in this collection of possible tomorrows. What happens when boiling heat stokes family resentments; when a girl’s personal crisis trumps global catastrophe; or when two climate scientists decide to party like it’s the end of the world? Like the best sci-fi, these cli-fi stories offer up answers that are darkly funny, liberating, and all too conceivable.
• 
  Henry

  I really like Lauren Groff’s writing. Loved “Matrix”, one of the best novels I read this year. This story however was junk. Crazy woman with a useless lover in a non-sensical story that I couldn’t figure out what the message, if any, was. Just a note: ecological responsibility and climate change psychosis are not the same thing.
• 
  Lucinda

  Not even sure what was the point of this short story. Thank goodness it was short and put me to sleep last night.
• 
  Nyssa

  What!?!
  
  Maybe, like Ange, I am too sleep-deprived to appreciate what I just heard/read - although I did get three hours where she got none - but I have no idea what this story was trying to say.
  I get the concerns about rising seawater, hurricanes, Florida's unclean beaches, and its possible bleak future - but the rest - Huh?
• 
  Allyce

  The insanity making reality of impending climate doom.
  
  A woman grapples with the horror of impending climate disaster. A good short story about the bizarre times we live in.
• 
  Matt Quann

  A downer of a story that never really grabbed me.
• 
  Kathy

  Didn't really do anything for me
• 
  Starr Waddell

  Insomnia + Anxiety + single motherhood + climate change + living in Florida for a long while = I really felt this.
• 
  Yvette

  I received this book for free with my Amazon prime account. I would say it was an interestingly written account of a single character, though provoking, yet fell short of having an actually plotline or resolution.
• 
  Bookphile

  What?
  
  I felt like the connection to climate change here was marginal, that really this was a story about a mother's existential angst over having brought a child into a world that seems unsuitable to raising a child. I could have picked the mother up and plopped her into a war zone or a place without any economic opportunity and the plot still would have worked.
  
  Though I didn't think there was much plot. There were a lot of fancy words and a confusing side plot involving a vanishing primary source and... You know what? I'm not sure why I'm trying to figure out what to make of this story. It was all over the place and didn't seem to have any cohesiveness whatsoever.
  
  Also, I'm so over the drunken mother trope. So. Over. It. It's lazy shorthand to me. Find another way to show self-destructive behavior than falling back on the good old drunken main character will you please, fiction?
  
  Clearly, this story was not my thing.
• 
  Angieleigh

  Boca Raton
  
  Disclaimer: I read and listened to this book through my Kindle Unlimited subscription.
  
  This novella should be part of a mental health collection, not a collection about the climate crisis we're facing.
  
  In my opinion, the climate crisis seemed a to be an afterthought, brought up towards the end as an obsession of a woman in the middle of a mental breakdown due to insomnia.
  
  Ange was one dimensional, the author concentrating on a mother desperately in need of medical attention, instead of staying on topic. Phyllis, her boss, acted irresponsible by leaving Ange's young daughter with her when it was clear that Ange was incapable of taking care of her.
  
  Don't get me started on that abrupt ending. I was invested in the hopes that someone would get her help, and ended up being annoyed.
  
• 
  Quentin Wallace

  So far the "warmer" series hasn't done much for me. I realize the idea is to base the stories around climate change, but you don't want every story to be a version of "The Day After Tomorrow" so we end up with some odd themes.
  
  This story was unsettling and surreal, but never managed to quite grab me.
• 
  Heather Spitzberg

  Dark whopper
  
  I had to read this twice and I'm glad I did - so much more meaning. Worth your time for this interesting take.
• 
  Chinara Ahmadova

  Nəsə yaxşı bir hekayə gəldi. Öz tənhalığıyla okeana oxşayan, təbiətin onları aparmağa gəldiyini düşünən paranoyak bir ana.
• 
  Richard

  The effects of climate change have been distilled into the various talents of 7 creative authors. Boca Raton is my first short story in this collection I have read.
  Wow, was I disappointed. My concern is a lack of hope in this account of a young single mum and her daughter.
  Ange and her 7 year old child, Lily are tight and do stuff together, sensitive to each other and all they have as ‘Dad’ could not cope as a husband and father.
  They go to a clean up event which freaks Ange out. As a result she can not sleep and her focus drifts to a future planetary catastrophe in Florida based on scientific productions of ice cap melts and sea level rises. It is an ecological disaster for the State, the loss of the Everglades and fresh water sources. Even their home would be flooded and lost to the salt water onslaught.
  Ange can not sleep; her work suffers. Reality seems to blur with prophesies of doom and end of world thinking. Her boss recognises her need for rest a friend suggests sleeping tablets as depression overtakes Ange.
  Meanwhile Lily goes through life as a normal functioning child with her whole life ahead of her.
  What is not clear is what is sending Ange into a sense of loss and darkness. Lack of sleep. A doomsday scenario. The home they live in; where an earlier murder/suicide took place. Financial constraints. A lack of sex and male companionship.
  This is not directly addressed by the author and the reader is left to watch helplessly as Ange she and us readers literally loss the plot.
  That the ending comes too abruptly or is painfully delayed perhaps reflects the disquiet most will have with reading this short story. That I struggled to review it and award a fair assessment shows my confused mind. It is well written by a respected author but I failed to really appreciate what message it brings or how I engage with the story.
• 
  Shalini Raakendra

  Let me begin by stating that I admit, that being aware of the environmental changes we humans, as a race are causing is crucial. However, this short story seemed a little too paranoid and hopeless to me. It didn't speak of horrors that the future generations are going to face in a way that would make you reconsider the footprint you are leaving behind. Honestly, I get like I was reading the diary of a delusional, depressed and a paranoid Mom. Then again, it is just my opinion.
• 
  Jo

  As a fan of Lauren Groff this was a bit disappointing. Her writing is as good as in Fates and Furies and Arcadia but this felt so disjointed and although it feels like you are downplaying the effects of climate change by saying it erred on the side of melodrama- it did. For 31 pages it’s satisfying in its characters and their backgrounds and discussing big issues such as oceans rising and mental health but I felt strangely unsatisfied by the end.
• 
  Nancy

  I love Lauren Groff’s writing—and I love her short stories and her evocative descriptions of Florida, half lush and humid, half disgusting detritus in what could be paradise. But this didn’t do it for me. The setting was gothic and the plot setup interesting. But then it didn’t go anywhere. It stopped moving forward, either for better or worse. Three stars.
• 
  Maureen

  Going to save this one and give it another read, I feel just short of putting it all together, I was listening to it and sometimes I miss just a few necessary details. At the moment I feel as though it was a little disjointed with a climate change being flung over a horror story.
• 
  Kent Winward

  Global warming can be such a bummer.
• 
  Cherise Wolas

  One of 7 short stories about climate change, free from Amazon.
• 
  Susan

  She's pregnant, right? Did no one else pick up on that? She's not keeping things in proportion because her hormones are all out of whack.