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Florida
In this elegiac and luminous novel, which John Ashbery called "an amazing achievement" and Mary Gordon dubbed "a wholly original endeavor," Christine Schutt gives voice to the feast of memory, the mystery of the mad and missing, and the power of words.
Set in the Midwest, where Florida represents a faraway paradise, this novel tells the story of Alice Fivey. Fatherless since she was seven, Alice is left in the care of her relatives at the age of ten, when her mother, whose "toenails winked in the foil bed we knew for Florida," is institutionalized. Alice is moved from place to place, remaining still while others try to mold her into someone different from her mother. She consoles herself with books and becomes a storyteller herself as she moves into adulthood, ever further from the desolation of her mother's actions and closer to the meaning of her own experience.
Told in brief scenes of spare beauty, Florida is a graceful and gripping tale of family, forgiveness, and creation of the self.
Set in the Midwest, where Florida represents a faraway paradise, this novel tells the story of Alice Fivey. Fatherless since she was seven, Alice is left in the care of her relatives at the age of ten, when her mother, whose "toenails winked in the foil bed we knew for Florida," is institutionalized. Alice is moved from place to place, remaining still while others try to mold her into someone different from her mother. She consoles herself with books and becomes a storyteller herself as she moves into adulthood, ever further from the desolation of her mother's actions and closer to the meaning of her own experience.
Told in brief scenes of spare beauty, Florida is a graceful and gripping tale of family, forgiveness, and creation of the self.
189 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2003
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August 14, 2013
In this slender novel, Christine Schutt has written a poem to loss and loneliness, to the anguish of losing parents, to the threat of heredity ("you're just like your mother") to the ephemeral joy of connecting, in some small way, even in fantasies; and to the saving grace of words.
The novel is told, in short, fragmented chapters, by Alice Fivey, who opens the novel remembering a happier time, when her father was still alive and her mother was living at home:
"One winter afternoon—an entire winter—it was my father who was taking us. Father and Mother and I, we were going to Florida—who knew for how long? I listened in at the breakfast table whenever I heard talk of sunshine. I asked questions about our living there that made them smile. We all smiled a lot at the breakfast table. We ate sectioned fruit capped with bleedy maraschinos—my favorite! The squeezed juice of the grapefruit was grainy with sugar and pulpy, sweet, pink. 'Could I have more?' I asked, and my father said sure. In Florida, he said it was good health all the time. No winter coats in Florida, no boots, no chains, no salt, no plows and shovels. In the balmy state of Florida, fruit fell in the meanest yard. Sweets, nuts, saltwater taffies in seashell colors. In the Florida we were headed for the afternoon was swizzled drinks and cherries to eat, stem and all: 'Here’s to you, here’s to me, here’s to our new home!' One winter afternoon in our favorite restaurant, there was Florida in our future while I was licking at the foam on the fluted glass, biting the rind and licking sugar, waiting for what was promised: the maraschino cherry, ever-sweet every time."
Alice's father dies in an accident soon after this memory, drowning after he drove his car into a lake. Alice is only five when he dies. For two years afterwards, her mother (also named Alice) and Alice cling to the promise of a Florida where life is easy and the sun is warm, in the face of frigidly cold winters, a succession of brutal boyfriends (all of whom Alice and her mother call Walter), and an extended family that looks down on Alice Sr.'s erratic behavior. Alice's mother is loud, while her brother and mother are quiet. She is profligate in her generosity to others, while her brother and mother carefully hoard their wealth. She makes public scenes, while her brother and mother are careful to avoid unpleasant topics and keep their voices down. When Alice is seven, the family chauffeur and handyman, Arthur, drives her to The San, where she remains throughout her daughter's childhood.
Schutt is masterful in using a few words and phrases to evoke Alice's life without her mother. Living first with her wealthy Uncle Billy and Aunt Frances, and briefly in a huge mansion with her bedridden grandmother, Alice is haunted by the specter of her mother. She and her relatives continually compare her to her mother -- both are loud, "all mouth." Soon after her mother is admitted to The San, the following scene takes place: "As soon as Uncle Billy was gone, Aunt Frances caught me at the cupboards, finding my thumb in Mother’s thumb-cut crystal glasses. 'Snooping!' she said. 'Your mother liked to snoop, too. Did you know that? Next time, ask.'” Aunt Frances and Uncle Billy constantly criticize Alice's mother for being a spendthrift, suggesting that Alice may follow in her footsteps: "Aunt Frances spoke of money, of Uncle Billy’s, Nonna’s, and her own, but not my mother’s; what was left of my mother’s was knotted in trusts and Nonna was paying for me—didn’t I know that? Aunt Frances said, and said often, 'Didn’t your mother teach you?' Simple economies and healthful ways. There were rules, manners. Made beds and sailing spoons. 'Napkins first and last,' she said, 'and the napkin ring is yours,' and so it was, handwrought and hammered, a gothic napkin ring with my mother’s name, which was also mine, Alice.
"Alice, Alice, Alice, Alice!" Throughout the novel, Schutt eloquently -- and painfully -- depicts Alice's conflict between fearing she is like her mother, and hoping she is like her mother.
Schutt's writing is breathtakingly eerie, sad, beautiful, strange. With not a wasted word, she paints indelible images. The San is described as having: "Wavy grounds, old trees, floating nurses." She depicts Alice's mother just before she was driven to The San: "Mother was wearing the falling-leaves coat in the falling-leaf colors, a thing blown it was she seemed, past its season, a brittle skittering across the icy snow to where Arthur stood by the car, fogged in." Schutt lends the same deft touch to her descriptions of weather, houses, landscapes: "The air then was coppery with music...." Schutt's prose elevates this novel above its relatively simple plot.
As the book progresses, we trace Alice's life after she is living on her own in New York. As she struggles with the Walters in her own life, flies across the country to visit her mother, and seeks to become a poet, as she believes her father wanted to be, Alice must come to terms with her inheritances as well as with her individuality. There are no easy solutions to Alice's dilemmas, because they are part of life. Schutt's ability to convey the mess and uncertainty of an adult life, the tenuous ties to the past and the hesitant hopes for future, and to turn that life into poetry, is richly rewarding. This novel is highly recommended.
Many thanks to Open Road and to Netgalley for sending me this ARC.
The novel is told, in short, fragmented chapters, by Alice Fivey, who opens the novel remembering a happier time, when her father was still alive and her mother was living at home:
"One winter afternoon—an entire winter—it was my father who was taking us. Father and Mother and I, we were going to Florida—who knew for how long? I listened in at the breakfast table whenever I heard talk of sunshine. I asked questions about our living there that made them smile. We all smiled a lot at the breakfast table. We ate sectioned fruit capped with bleedy maraschinos—my favorite! The squeezed juice of the grapefruit was grainy with sugar and pulpy, sweet, pink. 'Could I have more?' I asked, and my father said sure. In Florida, he said it was good health all the time. No winter coats in Florida, no boots, no chains, no salt, no plows and shovels. In the balmy state of Florida, fruit fell in the meanest yard. Sweets, nuts, saltwater taffies in seashell colors. In the Florida we were headed for the afternoon was swizzled drinks and cherries to eat, stem and all: 'Here’s to you, here’s to me, here’s to our new home!' One winter afternoon in our favorite restaurant, there was Florida in our future while I was licking at the foam on the fluted glass, biting the rind and licking sugar, waiting for what was promised: the maraschino cherry, ever-sweet every time."
Alice's father dies in an accident soon after this memory, drowning after he drove his car into a lake. Alice is only five when he dies. For two years afterwards, her mother (also named Alice) and Alice cling to the promise of a Florida where life is easy and the sun is warm, in the face of frigidly cold winters, a succession of brutal boyfriends (all of whom Alice and her mother call Walter), and an extended family that looks down on Alice Sr.'s erratic behavior. Alice's mother is loud, while her brother and mother are quiet. She is profligate in her generosity to others, while her brother and mother carefully hoard their wealth. She makes public scenes, while her brother and mother are careful to avoid unpleasant topics and keep their voices down. When Alice is seven, the family chauffeur and handyman, Arthur, drives her to The San, where she remains throughout her daughter's childhood.
Schutt is masterful in using a few words and phrases to evoke Alice's life without her mother. Living first with her wealthy Uncle Billy and Aunt Frances, and briefly in a huge mansion with her bedridden grandmother, Alice is haunted by the specter of her mother. She and her relatives continually compare her to her mother -- both are loud, "all mouth." Soon after her mother is admitted to The San, the following scene takes place: "As soon as Uncle Billy was gone, Aunt Frances caught me at the cupboards, finding my thumb in Mother’s thumb-cut crystal glasses. 'Snooping!' she said. 'Your mother liked to snoop, too. Did you know that? Next time, ask.'” Aunt Frances and Uncle Billy constantly criticize Alice's mother for being a spendthrift, suggesting that Alice may follow in her footsteps: "Aunt Frances spoke of money, of Uncle Billy’s, Nonna’s, and her own, but not my mother’s; what was left of my mother’s was knotted in trusts and Nonna was paying for me—didn’t I know that? Aunt Frances said, and said often, 'Didn’t your mother teach you?' Simple economies and healthful ways. There were rules, manners. Made beds and sailing spoons. 'Napkins first and last,' she said, 'and the napkin ring is yours,' and so it was, handwrought and hammered, a gothic napkin ring with my mother’s name, which was also mine, Alice.
"Alice, Alice, Alice, Alice!" Throughout the novel, Schutt eloquently -- and painfully -- depicts Alice's conflict between fearing she is like her mother, and hoping she is like her mother.
Schutt's writing is breathtakingly eerie, sad, beautiful, strange. With not a wasted word, she paints indelible images. The San is described as having: "Wavy grounds, old trees, floating nurses." She depicts Alice's mother just before she was driven to The San: "Mother was wearing the falling-leaves coat in the falling-leaf colors, a thing blown it was she seemed, past its season, a brittle skittering across the icy snow to where Arthur stood by the car, fogged in." Schutt lends the same deft touch to her descriptions of weather, houses, landscapes: "The air then was coppery with music...." Schutt's prose elevates this novel above its relatively simple plot.
As the book progresses, we trace Alice's life after she is living on her own in New York. As she struggles with the Walters in her own life, flies across the country to visit her mother, and seeks to become a poet, as she believes her father wanted to be, Alice must come to terms with her inheritances as well as with her individuality. There are no easy solutions to Alice's dilemmas, because they are part of life. Schutt's ability to convey the mess and uncertainty of an adult life, the tenuous ties to the past and the hesitant hopes for future, and to turn that life into poetry, is richly rewarding. This novel is highly recommended.
Many thanks to Open Road and to Netgalley for sending me this ARC.
October 2, 2013
While reading this, I suffered from a keen sense of déjà vu.
"Now where have I come across similar prose?"
Then I dredged up from memory, my feelings about Offred's nearly toneless, emotionally detached, subtly traumatized voice in The Handmaid's Tale.
The protagonist, Alice Fivey's voice shares stark similarities with Offred's, in the way it drips with a resignation to fate and acute despair. There's nothing much lyrical about the prose of THT as opposed to the prose-poem like structure of Florida, but there's the note of desolation and suppressed grief palpable in both the narrator voices.
While I liked THT extremely because of the brilliant extrapolation of facts concerning present trends on misogyny, Alice Fivey's rather blandly narrated tale of grappling with abandonment issues left me cold and unaffected.
And the thing is I am not a big fan of this kind of writing characterized by awkward, stumpy sentences which must be the polar opposite of Proustian prose. In fact, it grates on my nerves. My brand of poetic prose would be Anaïs Nin's, Virginia Woolf's in pretty much every one of her books or Toni Morrison's in Beloved. Sorry Christine Schutt, but your prose doesn't seem all that poetic to me.
Alice Fivey is an orphaned child who lost her father to a car accident. A few years later her mother falls victim to a mental illness and has to be institutionalized as a result of which Alice becomes homeless, reduced to the state of temporary live-in arrangements with a set of unsympathetic relatives.
The reader is led through her growing years in the midwest, where she is shown rather implicitly (meaning the writer rigorously adheres to Aubrey's 'show don't tell' rule) to suffer from profound loneliness, her dreams of a laughter-filled life with her parents in Florida shattered to bits. Her isolation is so pronounced that only the company of her family chauffeur Arthur, whom Alice comes to view as a kind of father figure, seems to provide her with a degree of comfort. Arthur becomes the only person who doesn't treat her unkindly or make thoughtless remarks regarding her mother the way her Aunt Frances and Uncle Billy do.
There are certain sentences containing heart-breaking implications of Alice's sense of hurt and subdued anger at her mother's 'betrayal'.
This one really stabbed me in a rather sensitive spot. But barring a few instances like the sentences I quoted above, Alice's story didn't achieve any kind of high emotional resonance. More often than not, the monotony of reading similarly structured sentences crept in unnoticed and I found myself trying to glide over them with a fluid grace in an effort to finish the book soon and move on to better reads.
3.5/5
P.S.:- So I have read Tampa and I have read Florida in the same year. Now I hope I don't end up coming across a book named Tallahassee any time soon since I know I'll be very much tempted to read it too.
"Now where have I come across similar prose?"
Then I dredged up from memory, my feelings about Offred's nearly toneless, emotionally detached, subtly traumatized voice in The Handmaid's Tale.
The protagonist, Alice Fivey's voice shares stark similarities with Offred's, in the way it drips with a resignation to fate and acute despair. There's nothing much lyrical about the prose of THT as opposed to the prose-poem like structure of Florida, but there's the note of desolation and suppressed grief palpable in both the narrator voices.
While I liked THT extremely because of the brilliant extrapolation of facts concerning present trends on misogyny, Alice Fivey's rather blandly narrated tale of grappling with abandonment issues left me cold and unaffected.
And the thing is I am not a big fan of this kind of writing characterized by awkward, stumpy sentences which must be the polar opposite of Proustian prose. In fact, it grates on my nerves. My brand of poetic prose would be Anaïs Nin's, Virginia Woolf's in pretty much every one of her books or Toni Morrison's in Beloved. Sorry Christine Schutt, but your prose doesn't seem all that poetic to me.
Alice Fivey is an orphaned child who lost her father to a car accident. A few years later her mother falls victim to a mental illness and has to be institutionalized as a result of which Alice becomes homeless, reduced to the state of temporary live-in arrangements with a set of unsympathetic relatives.
"I was ten - ten was my age when Mother left for good, and this sleep-over life began."
The reader is led through her growing years in the midwest, where she is shown rather implicitly (meaning the writer rigorously adheres to Aubrey's 'show don't tell' rule) to suffer from profound loneliness, her dreams of a laughter-filled life with her parents in Florida shattered to bits. Her isolation is so pronounced that only the company of her family chauffeur Arthur, whom Alice comes to view as a kind of father figure, seems to provide her with a degree of comfort. Arthur becomes the only person who doesn't treat her unkindly or make thoughtless remarks regarding her mother the way her Aunt Frances and Uncle Billy do.
"No one was there to think he was my father, so I could love him as I might a father."
There are certain sentences containing heart-breaking implications of Alice's sense of hurt and subdued anger at her mother's 'betrayal'.
"Mother, or the woman who said she was my mother, settled in California, finally."
This one really stabbed me in a rather sensitive spot. But barring a few instances like the sentences I quoted above, Alice's story didn't achieve any kind of high emotional resonance. More often than not, the monotony of reading similarly structured sentences crept in unnoticed and I found myself trying to glide over them with a fluid grace in an effort to finish the book soon and move on to better reads.
3.5/5
P.S.:- So I have read Tampa and I have read Florida in the same year. Now I hope I don't end up coming across a book named Tallahassee any time soon since I know I'll be very much tempted to read it too.
August 29, 2013
I could give the whole synopsis of this novel in a few sentences and it wouldn't matter or spoil the book if I did, because the beauty of reading this is in its language and the connections that that language makes. It's not really a 'prose poem of a novel,' as I've said of other novels that also fit my previous sentence, but the writing is poetic; I wasn't surprised to learn that Schutt is a poet.
Language is the consolation for the narrator Alice as she struggles to make sense of a mother who probably should never have had a child; a father who may or may not have committed suicide when Alice was 5; and the other adults she's shuttled amongst once her mother is institutionalized when Alice is 7, those who try to replace her parents and those whom Alice herself tries to twist to fit into the void she so achingly feels.
I was fleetingly reminded of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man since the language matures as Alice grows up, especially after her high-school English classes with an awkward, passionate teacher. My favorite passage is probably the chapter called "Nonna Speaks" in which Alice gives voice to her grandmother, a woman who hasn't spoken in years due to a stroke.
I used the word 'consolation' above because the line Books, the orphan's consolation stood out for me, as what is meant is not a literal orphan, but something much more universal.
I don't know if this novel is semi-autobiographical, but the cover photo is credited as 'courtesy of the author,' giving some credence to the idea.
Language is the consolation for the narrator Alice as she struggles to make sense of a mother who probably should never have had a child; a father who may or may not have committed suicide when Alice was 5; and the other adults she's shuttled amongst once her mother is institutionalized when Alice is 7, those who try to replace her parents and those whom Alice herself tries to twist to fit into the void she so achingly feels.
I was fleetingly reminded of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man since the language matures as Alice grows up, especially after her high-school English classes with an awkward, passionate teacher. My favorite passage is probably the chapter called "Nonna Speaks" in which Alice gives voice to her grandmother, a woman who hasn't spoken in years due to a stroke.
I used the word 'consolation' above because the line Books, the orphan's consolation stood out for me, as what is meant is not a literal orphan, but something much more universal.
I don't know if this novel is semi-autobiographical, but the cover photo is credited as 'courtesy of the author,' giving some credence to the idea.
December 23, 2021
The preposterous blossoms, candy pink and stupidly profuse, were in the night light strangely come as from another planet. But about time was what Aunt Frances said, “Spring? We never thought we would see it!”
Wash the windows then. Ruck the garden. Scatter seed. The dots of yellow in the wood, the spiked, green start of things: snowdrop and daffodil and crocus.
(p. 81)
Florida is a gorgeous book, quiet and powerful. The prose alone would have been sufficient to keep me going, exquisite as it is, but the story itself hit me squarely in the feels and ultimately became the deciding factor in cementing my total adoration of this text.
Much, much more Schutt in my future, no doubt. She’s an absolute prose monster of the highest order and I can’t get enough.
Highly recommended.
Wash the windows then. Ruck the garden. Scatter seed. The dots of yellow in the wood, the spiked, green start of things: snowdrop and daffodil and crocus.
(p. 81)
Florida is a gorgeous book, quiet and powerful. The prose alone would have been sufficient to keep me going, exquisite as it is, but the story itself hit me squarely in the feels and ultimately became the deciding factor in cementing my total adoration of this text.
Much, much more Schutt in my future, no doubt. She’s an absolute prose monster of the highest order and I can’t get enough.
Highly recommended.
March 10, 2014
You should see my paperback copy of this ... countless phrases and passages underlined. This is the most potently poetic book I've probably ever read. The writing is so densely lyrical that it hurts. Never mind the subject matter which is downbeat and ruminating on insanity, isolation, fear and longing, the writing transforms those downbeat themes into something that fucking soars way high up.
The plot: our narrator is a little girl, deprecated from her mother who is holed up in a medical care facility. The girl is sent to the flat and dim Midwest, placed in the care of wealthy family members who have servants, drivers and the lot. As the girl grows, she struggles with wanting to be creative and more like her mother who's "gone fishing", and less like her "dusty, old money" relatives.
Incredible read, and also, an instruction manual of sorts for those who wonder how poetry and fiction can be married into a form that is equal parts linked-flash collection and novella.
The plot: our narrator is a little girl, deprecated from her mother who is holed up in a medical care facility. The girl is sent to the flat and dim Midwest, placed in the care of wealthy family members who have servants, drivers and the lot. As the girl grows, she struggles with wanting to be creative and more like her mother who's "gone fishing", and less like her "dusty, old money" relatives.
Incredible read, and also, an instruction manual of sorts for those who wonder how poetry and fiction can be married into a form that is equal parts linked-flash collection and novella.
April 11, 2020
Phenomenally moving, gorgeously told, full of sentences you'd kill to have written yourself. Bonus: a last page that made me weeeeeeeep.
May 14, 2018
Christine Schutt, I love what you can do with words, many of your stories are spectacular, you have a keen sense of what is essential in the distillation process. And yet, even as much as I typically prefer novels to stories, this just doesn't grab me the way your other work has. These memories feel distant, leeched of urgency, depersonalized. Is this an effect of trauma? If so, the traumas here are too submerged or absent to lend weight and stakes to the rest. I should just pick up Nightwork, again and again and again, as there is still mush more (urgency, cryptic narrative, meaning) I could pull from those pages.
September 16, 2014
First:
"Dirty trails of snow were what I saw outside and the lawn, a thinning head of grass, a combed scalp--very muddy. Defeat was everywhere: dark shrubs, leathery and broken, and straw-dry plants on the shelves of the rocks, in shock, on end. The rocks were dripping tears yet nothing caught the light."
-I marked this and wrote "puh" in the margin.
Then:
"'Can I?' I asked, already starting, "Can I?" my hand in the jar of salted pretzels scrolled like the tops of old desk keys."
And then:
"Not since my mother had anyone hurt me with my own hurtful thoughts, and I felt sobered."
-I could asterisk the entire book and write, "puh."
"Dirty trails of snow were what I saw outside and the lawn, a thinning head of grass, a combed scalp--very muddy. Defeat was everywhere: dark shrubs, leathery and broken, and straw-dry plants on the shelves of the rocks, in shock, on end. The rocks were dripping tears yet nothing caught the light."
-I marked this and wrote "puh" in the margin.
Then:
"'Can I?' I asked, already starting, "Can I?" my hand in the jar of salted pretzels scrolled like the tops of old desk keys."
And then:
"Not since my mother had anyone hurt me with my own hurtful thoughts, and I felt sobered."
-I could asterisk the entire book and write, "puh."
June 9, 2010
Florida by Christine Schutt is a fictional memoir about a girl named Alice. It's a slim novel, a sort of "portrait of the artist as a young woman" told in fragmented prose-poetry meant to approximate the jumbled, chaotic non-structure of memory.
The best thing about this novel is its amazing sentences. The author has a marvelous facility with language, and it shines brightest in her uniquely rendered descriptions of things and places. Also dialogue. Her words sound beautiful, and they conduct an electrical charge - sometimes like pinpricks, sometimes like a bruising jolt from a defibrillator. Truly, there's more poetry than prose in this book. In fact, there are entire reviews that focus solely on the poetry of her language.
One of the book’s failings is its all-but-nonexistent plot – which is fine, really. Schutt is experimenting with language and with representing memory as it's really experienced - in fragments - so a good plot really isn't germane.
Another, more serious issue is indistinct characterization. I didn’t get a good sense of her mother and Arthur, despite the fact that most of the memory-fragments revolve around them. Even the narrator, Alice, is murky. And worse, unsympathetic. She’s thoughtless of others, self-absorbed. So although this book does have some insightful moments and a nice ending, the absence of compelling characters made it somewhat disappointing for me.
But like I said, Florida is best appreciated for its beautiful sentences. And there are many very good ones. But do I really want to read a whole book of beautiful sentences if they don’t, taken all together, have much impact? To me, Florida was more affected than affecting.
The best thing about this novel is its amazing sentences. The author has a marvelous facility with language, and it shines brightest in her uniquely rendered descriptions of things and places. Also dialogue. Her words sound beautiful, and they conduct an electrical charge - sometimes like pinpricks, sometimes like a bruising jolt from a defibrillator. Truly, there's more poetry than prose in this book. In fact, there are entire reviews that focus solely on the poetry of her language.
One of the book’s failings is its all-but-nonexistent plot – which is fine, really. Schutt is experimenting with language and with representing memory as it's really experienced - in fragments - so a good plot really isn't germane.
Another, more serious issue is indistinct characterization. I didn’t get a good sense of her mother and Arthur, despite the fact that most of the memory-fragments revolve around them. Even the narrator, Alice, is murky. And worse, unsympathetic. She’s thoughtless of others, self-absorbed. So although this book does have some insightful moments and a nice ending, the absence of compelling characters made it somewhat disappointing for me.
But like I said, Florida is best appreciated for its beautiful sentences. And there are many very good ones. But do I really want to read a whole book of beautiful sentences if they don’t, taken all together, have much impact? To me, Florida was more affected than affecting.
November 16, 2010
"Our bedroom was sealed, drawn against the flickering sea. Cold floor and filmy curtains, stony bed – I couldn’t fall asleep here and smoked my way to somewhere else.
All the time the terrible Walter was counting his money. He was figuring the tips.
He was sipping whiskey in the sealed room after dinner, near the window, in the dark; and because the room was very cold, I left him alone and opened the bathroom windows to let in the warm, wet air. I took a hot shower, which calmed me – but not for long. The sealed room where we slept was very cold and dark, and Walter was in the corner, without his shorts on, drinking, and his body, I saw, was wildly hairy. He saw me looking at him, and he said, 'I hate you, too.'"
An ode to broken families, childish insouciance & deep longing, the consolation of literature, the wantonness of memory – a bright, quick dream; read it now, now, now.
All the time the terrible Walter was counting his money. He was figuring the tips.
He was sipping whiskey in the sealed room after dinner, near the window, in the dark; and because the room was very cold, I left him alone and opened the bathroom windows to let in the warm, wet air. I took a hot shower, which calmed me – but not for long. The sealed room where we slept was very cold and dark, and Walter was in the corner, without his shorts on, drinking, and his body, I saw, was wildly hairy. He saw me looking at him, and he said, 'I hate you, too.'"
An ode to broken families, childish insouciance & deep longing, the consolation of literature, the wantonness of memory – a bright, quick dream; read it now, now, now.
Read
July 27, 2011How this did not win the National Book Award, I'll never figure out. The story of a 12 year old girl coping with her mother's mental illness, is taken in by her aunt. The title state becomes a sort of promised land or paradise to be reached. If they can get there, everything will be fine. While the plot is not especially original, the fragmentation of the narrative, the poetic prose and the depth of the narrator's observations, use of detail and characterization and pathos for those around her, including her mother, is limpid, inventive, and real. At 150 pages, a quick read, but I found myself reading passages over and over again. A new favorite.
July 23, 2012
Written by my first writing teacher (a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist).... try it if you dare to read a truly unique voice.
January 21, 2023
Some prettyism here, duh, but a bit too saccharine for me in the dead of Midwest winter. If you are piqued to pinpoint ripe one-liners or half-liners, then pull the book off your shelf. I have a deviated septum so I’m not prone to smelling the roses, and the diaphanous girlhood prose of this one just didn’t do anything meaningful for me. I’ll come back for another title of her’s later on.
July 11, 2014
Florida is more about the beauty of language and its ability to evoke memory, place and emotion than it is about particular characters in the arc of a particular story. It reads more like disjointed chapters of a poet's diary than a novel. Though I adore evocative language and gifted use of imagery, I am too literal and practical to appreciate them without the anchor of a proper story and empathetic characters. Alice Fivey is the child of two creative but unstable parents who ultimately leave her to be raised by stodgy old-money relatives who disapprove of Alice's parents and have no interest in loving and raising their child. Alice's father drives into a lake and drowns when Alice is only 5, and her mother suffers a breakdown shortly thereafter and spends the bulk of Alice's childhood in "The San." Alice grows up in a loveless, repressed environment with family obsessed with holding onto their money. She suffers from the sting of abandonment and the knowledge that her own creative gift for poetry is likely a sign that she takes after her unstable parents. The story is brief and fragmented, filled with beautiful language and a sense of longing and foreboding. Read this one if you enjoy a prose-poetry style of writing and are not seeking a compelling story. ~ Ms Dimmick
March 30, 2011
This took me forever to finish and it was mostly because of my laziness but it really was an amazing read. The alliteration of Schutt truly is on a level on its own in the Contemporary Fiction genre. Now that I have read the works of some other Gordon Lich students, I will say that this - along with the majority of Schutt's work - has the most in-your-face alliteration, consonance and assonance then the other popular choices (Sam Lipsyte, Amy Hempel, etc.), and can almost be too profound at times. However, I would never say that this takes away from the overall enjoyment of the work! Christine Schutt still remains of the essential authors to read if you are interested in getting into Contemporary Fiction genre!
August 18, 2016
As I wrote to a friend of mine to recommend this book: It’s been a long time since a contemporary writer has moved me with their use of language in the way she has… I guess, slit me heart to cock on the dining room floor in what I can only imagine as the sweetest way possible when it comes to emotional evisceration. I'm glad my nephews were not around to witness the avuncular crumple. A beautiful story told in a beautiful way. I wish I discovered Ms. Schutt sooner. It's the kind of literature that saves you from jumping from the top floor window of your life by opening it.
September 6, 2009
truly beautiful writing ... i couldn't finish though because it was making me sad
December 15, 2017
This reads like memoir, not fiction. A writer's book more than a reader's, it's beautifully written, fascinatingly structured but too vague and deep dark to work for me as a whole.
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February 14, 2018Christine Schutt understands what music means in sentences and she understands how to form a structure without being a slave to plot points. This book is a song from the heart and it hurts and it feels good.
May 1, 2017
A poem of a novel to get lost in--and sometimes I did. Schutt's language is awash in lush descriptions and a sense of urgency pervades the book as the narrator strives to understand the love and regrets of her family and life.
August 3, 2008
By far one of the best, most beautifully written books I have ever read.
January 20, 2009
Gorgeous. This novel is entirely written in prose-poetry, every word--every syllable--considered, but not overworked. Can't be skimmed; must be savored. Totally inspiring.
May 16, 2010
Beautifully poetic, but not much in the way of arc.
July 26, 2025
I’ll give “Florida” a star. That’s for the occasional sentence so beautifully turned it made me pause, reread, and briefly forget how utterly bored I was the rest of the time. Because make no mistake, this is boring. Very, very, very boring. And slow. Painfully, glacially, soul-crushingly slow. I’ve had hangovers that progressed faster.
The novel’s told in these broken, impressionistic fragments, trying to mimic the slippage and mess of memory. That kind of structure can work, if the pieces hum with life or pain or at least some kind of human pulse. Here, they don’t. These memories feel like they’re happening to someone else entirely. There’s no immediacy, no emotional grip. Just a cool, vacant detachment that made me wonder if the narrator had already floated off into the ether and left me behind with a pile of half-sketched sentences and soggy metaphors.
I kept thinking, maybe this distance is deliberate. Maybe it’s trying to show how trauma blanks things out, refracts the past into a kind of mental haze. That’s a fair intention. Trouble is, it doesn’t work. There’s no weight. No stakes. The trauma is either buried so deep you need a mining licence to find it or so thinly drawn it just doesn’t register.
The plot - if we’re being generous with that word - is virtually non-existent. Stuff happens, vaguely, then sort of dissolves. There’s a mum. There’s a man called Arthur. They drift in and out like ghosts but leave almost no impression. The narrator, Alice, is so undefined she might as well be smoke in a dress. Worse, she’s irritating: solipsistic, emotionally inert, and weirdly indifferent to anyone else. I don’t need my narrators to be likeable, but I do need to feel like they’re alive.
I’ll give Schutt some credit for trying something with language. There’s an attempt here to show how memory really functions: messy, out of order, fragmented like smashed glass. That’s the idea, anyway. In practice, it reads like a prose-poetry collection that wandered off course and got published as a novel by accident. It would have worked better as poems, because it doesn’t bloody work as a novel.
Characters are so underdeveloped they barely cast shadows. I never got a proper handle on the mother or Arthur, despite the fact they’re meant to be central. They just shimmer in the background, never sharp enough to matter. The whole thing is fuzzy, not in a lyrical way, but in a this-needs-another-draft way.
There are, to be fair, some genuinely gorgeous lines. Schutt can write. She can turn an image when she wants to. The problem is, those lines are stranded in a sea of vagueness and inertia. Do I want to trudge through 150 pages of stylistic flourishes if they never cohere into anything with emotional or narrative depth? Not really.
The whole thing feels overwrought. Poetic, sure. Subtle, yes. But there’s a difference between subtle and hollow, and “Florida” lands squarely on the wrong side. No real character growth. No proper plot. No one to care about. Just mood, fragments, and the occasional flicker of something that might’ve been powerful in a tighter, braver book.
Call me shallow, but I want more than just nice writing. I want something to feel. I want something to follow. This felt like staring at a blurry painting of someone else’s dream and being told to feel moved by it. I wasn’t. I was just bored.
The novel’s told in these broken, impressionistic fragments, trying to mimic the slippage and mess of memory. That kind of structure can work, if the pieces hum with life or pain or at least some kind of human pulse. Here, they don’t. These memories feel like they’re happening to someone else entirely. There’s no immediacy, no emotional grip. Just a cool, vacant detachment that made me wonder if the narrator had already floated off into the ether and left me behind with a pile of half-sketched sentences and soggy metaphors.
I kept thinking, maybe this distance is deliberate. Maybe it’s trying to show how trauma blanks things out, refracts the past into a kind of mental haze. That’s a fair intention. Trouble is, it doesn’t work. There’s no weight. No stakes. The trauma is either buried so deep you need a mining licence to find it or so thinly drawn it just doesn’t register.
The plot - if we’re being generous with that word - is virtually non-existent. Stuff happens, vaguely, then sort of dissolves. There’s a mum. There’s a man called Arthur. They drift in and out like ghosts but leave almost no impression. The narrator, Alice, is so undefined she might as well be smoke in a dress. Worse, she’s irritating: solipsistic, emotionally inert, and weirdly indifferent to anyone else. I don’t need my narrators to be likeable, but I do need to feel like they’re alive.
I’ll give Schutt some credit for trying something with language. There’s an attempt here to show how memory really functions: messy, out of order, fragmented like smashed glass. That’s the idea, anyway. In practice, it reads like a prose-poetry collection that wandered off course and got published as a novel by accident. It would have worked better as poems, because it doesn’t bloody work as a novel.
Characters are so underdeveloped they barely cast shadows. I never got a proper handle on the mother or Arthur, despite the fact they’re meant to be central. They just shimmer in the background, never sharp enough to matter. The whole thing is fuzzy, not in a lyrical way, but in a this-needs-another-draft way.
There are, to be fair, some genuinely gorgeous lines. Schutt can write. She can turn an image when she wants to. The problem is, those lines are stranded in a sea of vagueness and inertia. Do I want to trudge through 150 pages of stylistic flourishes if they never cohere into anything with emotional or narrative depth? Not really.
The whole thing feels overwrought. Poetic, sure. Subtle, yes. But there’s a difference between subtle and hollow, and “Florida” lands squarely on the wrong side. No real character growth. No proper plot. No one to care about. Just mood, fragments, and the occasional flicker of something that might’ve been powerful in a tighter, braver book.
Call me shallow, but I want more than just nice writing. I want something to feel. I want something to follow. This felt like staring at a blurry painting of someone else’s dream and being told to feel moved by it. I wasn’t. I was just bored.
July 5, 2018
Florida A Novel, is a slim book of only 156 pages. The story is written/labelled as "poise poetry". I've concluded that I'm not really a fan of stories written this way. I found it difficult getting used to the unfamiliar writing style for a good part of the story, until I finally did. I feel this way because I'm not one for reading every word. I don't enjoy the words, I'm not reading for the words, I want to read for the story instead, and not for the language of the words. This is probably also why I dislike too much descriptive in stories as a whole.
Alice who is the main character tells her story of growing up when she's an adult for most of the story. It's also about her present life as an adult, with her aging mother, aunt and uncle. Her childhood is told in bits and pieces as she remembers it, and not necessarily in order. So it seemed not to flow smoothly, and to be all over the place in her thoughts and memories.
This is a hard story, and a sad story to read. Alice grew up with a father who died, drowned when she was a girl, and a mother who was shortly, thereafter institutionalized. She was sent off to live with her aunt and uncle who were childless, and at other times she lived with her grandmother, her "Nonna"in her 3 floors, 11 bedrooms and bathrooms big house.
I felt sorry for Alice; her childhood was messed up, and it seemed that she was no better off as an adult.
I felt the ending was off, like it wasn't an ending, but I'm sure I'm missing the whole point because I don't truly get this type of writing.
Alice who is the main character tells her story of growing up when she's an adult for most of the story. It's also about her present life as an adult, with her aging mother, aunt and uncle. Her childhood is told in bits and pieces as she remembers it, and not necessarily in order. So it seemed not to flow smoothly, and to be all over the place in her thoughts and memories.
This is a hard story, and a sad story to read. Alice grew up with a father who died, drowned when she was a girl, and a mother who was shortly, thereafter institutionalized. She was sent off to live with her aunt and uncle who were childless, and at other times she lived with her grandmother, her "Nonna"in her 3 floors, 11 bedrooms and bathrooms big house.
I felt sorry for Alice; her childhood was messed up, and it seemed that she was no better off as an adult.
I felt the ending was off, like it wasn't an ending, but I'm sure I'm missing the whole point because I don't truly get this type of writing.
June 24, 2024
A poet’s novel for sure. The sentences are absolutely breathtaking. I couldn’t get over them. I’m not over them. There are too many underlined passages in this book for me to really comment on how masterful and maddening and wrenching this writing is… I can only say that I bought this book 10 years ago and I can’t believe it took me this long to read it.
I think of the arrogance and listlessness of the hbo series ‘succession’ when reading this though the wealth isn’t that large or public… but it/cash holds most of the characters aloft and unknowable (especially to themselves)… they’re prone to uncompetitive indulgent lifestyles that most people (including me) wish dropped on our laps… but inheritance is a weird debt. An encompassing one when embraced uncritically…I think Florida gets this.
I’m sure this book wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it was definitely, specifically, emphatically my f-ing cup of tea.
I think of the arrogance and listlessness of the hbo series ‘succession’ when reading this though the wealth isn’t that large or public… but it/cash holds most of the characters aloft and unknowable (especially to themselves)… they’re prone to uncompetitive indulgent lifestyles that most people (including me) wish dropped on our laps… but inheritance is a weird debt. An encompassing one when embraced uncritically…I think Florida gets this.
I’m sure this book wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it was definitely, specifically, emphatically my f-ing cup of tea.
November 13, 2018
Books are the orphan's consolation, observes the girl protagonist. She tries to navigate growing up in the shadow of parents who left her, sidling up to each grownup who cares for her, as if asking "Are you my mummy" and finding that nobody is. But she does grow up somehow, returns home for the funeral of one of her stand-in fathers, the hired man who had served this wealthy Wisconsin family all his life. In a short few paragraphs, Schutt uses the word "homely" twice, interspersed with the word "home". An accident? Not likely. The girl does not understand so many things that happen around her, and Schutt lifts the gauze sparingly, just enough for short bursts of enlightenment. Who was her father, her mother, her grandmother? It will take her a lifetime to figure it out!
June 26, 2017
This is an odd little book. The plot and action were as tenuously connected as the houses she lived in. Definitely the strength of character in the little girl, her resilience and persistence, kept her life moving and the book moving forward. Who can judge such a life? Only someone who has not had the anchor of a home with the certainty of two loving parents can understand what this life was about. I can only feel the loneliness and the alienation through the narrator's descriptions and dialogue. That gives me only a small piece, but enough to enjoy the book and make my way through it.
January 29, 2022
I didn't read the premise of this novel before opening, so I did not expect it to take place in the Midwest (and Arizona), but I did expect it to be fantastic - I've heard nothing but good things about Christine Schutt's writing and she has a great conversation with David Naimon on his Between the Covers podcast (which is what brought me here). Florida is a harrowing and vignette-esque novel about an upbringing told through the eyes of a girl bouncing between aunts, uncles, and grandparents. A premise I'll admit doesn't sound up my alley, but this book is fantastic.
February 27, 2019
Short novels are a tricky thing. They tend to struggle to paint a picture with enough depth and most tend to be rather forgettable. Not the case here. In 156 pages the author not only has a depth to all the characters here there is also a poignancy usually reserved for long novels. She conveys more with a carefully constructed paragraph than most do with a chapter. This was a great read and I highly recommend it.
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