A mother of two teenage sons is having a bathroom added to her house. She's taking her elderly dog for a walk when she spots a man who has been stalking her off and on for years. The police claim there is nothing they can do until he commits a crime. Her house is particularly vulnerable right now since it has a hole where work is proceeding. One night he enters the house and she finds him in her fridge. Luckily her son handles him in a very mature way. This was a scary story. The idea that a stalker can keep returning year after year and the police (Florida) don't help. Her husband isn't much help either. Groff has a new collection coming out next year called BRAWLERS. Looks like she has violence on her mind.
12 comments:
I read two of her collections - DELICATE EDIBLE BIRDS and FLORIDA - this year. This story might be in the forthcoming collection. The one reason I've always thought of a New Yorker sub was the short stories.
I haven't had a lot of reading time lately. I've been reading Hugh Howey's (mostly) dystopian stories in MACHINE LEARNING.
I'm not a fan of stalker novels although stalking is on the rise. It used to be Celebrities who were the focus of deranged stalkers, but apparently anyone can attract a stalker these days.
Own snow has turned to rain...and a lot of it!
Just read "Select Character" in the Hugh Howey collection. A woman sits at home with her baby while her husband is at work. To kill time she starts playing one of his violent war games, set in Afghanistan, but she plays it her own way. The husband comes home early one day and sees her playing and he's fascinated. He doesn't understand the way she plays - instead of trying to kill as many "enemy" as possible, she manages to avoid them as she goes through town, finally reaches an oasis where she can plant things. The ending has a great kick. Good story..
Love it. And there are games like that. Where you build a village or a world. The new show Pluribus may be headed that way.
No rain here.
James Reasoner has one today, the Cornell Woolrich "William Irish" novelet "Marihuana" (sic) as reprinted as one of Dell's early mass-market chapbooks, their 10c books line. https://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2025/11/review-marihuana-william-irish-cornell.html
I read one of Lauren Groff's short stories, "Birdie," a couple of years ago. I found it online at the Atlantic. I liked it and I should look around for more of short stories.
Reviews of warts and all biography and the often fiery letters of Muriel Spark (whom I first read as the author of the collection THE GO-AWAY BIRD, as a youngster, for an utterly tenuous SSW relevance): https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n18/colin-burrow/world-beating-buster-upper Go Away might've been a frequent command on her part, and not altogether a puzzle, that.
And I finally have my own WSS posted in more than skeletal form. Our cats having late-night problems that seem to have been addressed sufficiently (speaking, as I do in the capsule reviews, of hoping hard) has added to the drama. https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2025/11/short-story-wednesday-short-stories.html
Oh, this does sound scary, Patti! And now I'm curious as to why that man is stalking her. I'm going to have read some Groff, I think...
Because it is a literary short story, you never really find out. A crime short would tell you!
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