“…Paris in the dark seemed covered by a dusky skin, almost as though it were living. The arches in the facades were the curve of a throat, the street corners elbows, and in the silence Bern could almost hear the warm thumpings of some heart deep beneath the residue of civilizations.”

                So begins the title story of Lauren Groff’s new collection, Delicate Edible Birds, with this female war correspondent’s evocation of occupied France. As with Bern’s view of wartime Paris, the stories in this collection reveal their inmost ‘hearts’ and layers of meaning through a variety of interlocking subplots and themes. Indirect references to conversation and action, the use of childhood and memories, the casual passage of large, undefined amounts of time between moments of dramatic tension, and eccentric motifs (stuffed exotic birds, divers) all give the pieces a dreamlike, poetic feel. However, the plots all contain enough suspense – actually heightened by the understatement – to keep one reading.

                Motherhood presents itself in various ways throughout Delicate Edible Birds. In the first story, Lucky Chow Fun, the main character, a bright teenage girl who loves literature and swimming, reflects upon fairy tales. “What most of the stories have in common is both a very good, absent mother and an evil, present one. [They] are not like real life in all its beautiful ambiguity. There are no semigood semiabsent mothers. Or, for that matter, semipresent very good ones.”

                Delicate Edible Birds presents several examples of semipresent and semigood mothers: a preoccupied, mentally ill artist, an athletic heiress forced by her family to abandon her illegitimate son, an amnesiac mystery novelist taking refuge in an old cottage motel from an automobile and marital accident. We see more absent or somehow troubled mother figures than healthy and present ones, as the women struggle with factors involving various combinations of choice and circumstance. The story Majorette presents a note of hopeful sweetness – yet its loving, devoted mother has been shaped by the poverty and stress she watched her own mother and father endure while raising her.  Mothering relationships also occur upon occasion among characters not related by blood: Blythe the struggling artist and her patient friend Harriet, the mystery novelist’s child and her sensitive nanny Maria.

                In this collection, family love seems almost as fragile and precious as romantic love, and both often find themselves interrupted by illness, social class differences, and simply the limitations of time and space. Responsible choices on the part of those involved certainly help, such as Harriet’s coming to realize she must find a healthy balance between helping her troubled friend and being there for her own husband and children, and the mystery author’s husband leaving his dalliance with a young student in the Caribbean and returning home to wife and family. However, even with the best choices, even with great personal sacrifice, circumstances can tear apart families and relationships. Like the intricate cover art and the ‘birds’ of the title, love is delicate and fragile and must be carefully raised and preserved.

                Mysteries and secrets also serve as a motif throughout the story assortment. In Fugue, Lily becomes forced to cope with mature concepts when her parents go missing in an apparent automobile accident. Even with her empathetic nanny’s care, the shock drives her to violence against a baby bird as she rejects the babyhood within herself represented by her juvenile, misbehaving imaginary friend. Lucky Chow Fun’s townspeople react in shock to the discovery of enslaved prostitutes within their midst, and the revelation brings about many divorces and a general sense of paranoia in a place which already views nonwhite outsiders suspiciously. However, in Watershed, the diver’s last minute admission that he chose not to rescue a companion when the attempt would likely have cost both their lives brings him closer to his recently widowed neighbor and both experience a sense of shared absolution. Exposing truth has the potential to bring about redemption and healing, but also violence and division depending on the timing and how people choose to respond. Storytelling also represents the power to soften the edges of truth, to communicate values in a cleaner form than we find within the ragged waters of reality and perhaps bring something redemptive out of impossible or regretful situations.

                Each of the stories in Delicate Edible Birds invites careful thought and re-reading, and can be understood on many levels. Enough of a natural flow and rhythm is present to keep readers engaged, and the pieces read like Debussy reveries and preludes: lovely and complex but still accessible. The entire collection demonstrates that much remains for exploration within the universally relevant themes of lost and forbidden love, redemption, secrets, and parent-child relationships. Against such diverse backdrops as London during the 1918 flu epidemic, an upstate New York town’s first Chinese restaurant, a Latin American dictatorship, and a country motel, the characters work to master various crafts: writing, baton twirling, diving, performance art. Groff makes the proposition that perhaps our most basic relationships require the same level of care and dedication as these other personal pursuits.

Lauren Groff is also the author of a full-length novel, the Monster of Templeton, and a wife, mother, and athlete. She and her books are available at her website, www.laurengroff.com and she periodically speaks and does author appearances at independent bookstores.