New Yorker Fiction Review #273: "Annunciation" by Lauren Groff

I am not a big Lauren Groff fan. I am not even a small Lauren Groff fan. However, I read and mostly enjoyed this short story about a young woman's first steps into post-college adulthood, and the characters who are there to greet her. 

The main character is the oldest of, we presume, many children, from parents located somewhere here in Flyover Country. Her parents have all but turned their backs on her, and she heads to San Francisco upon graduation, to find work and start her adult life. 

I'm determined not to get too deeply into plots anymore, because I really don't think it adds much. What I will say is that the main character meets a couple of middle aged women who challenge her notions of what adulthood is and she comes to understand it's not a "state" that you arrive at, and then have everything figured out. 

My only real complaint about this story is that when the main character packs up her college belongings to drive to San Francisco, she takes (and I paraphrase): her toiletries, her sleeping bag, and her copy of Moby Dick. 

Moby Dick?? Come on. No one takes a copy of Moby Dick on an adventure when they're 21 or 22. Could Groff have been any more random in her selection of this book? How about On the Road or something? Anything but the most boring, overrated classic book of all time that we've all read under duress at one point or another.