Furies tells the story of the wife, Mathilde.

Fates tells the story of the husband, Lotto. The book examines a marriage in two parts. It probably was a 4.5 star book for me, but I'm going with rounding up. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart'- … ( more)Īpparently, based on the reviews, this book is very polarizing, but I thought (other than one bad chapter) it was excellent. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. But, like a squid from the deep, the story had turned itself inside out.'From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia, an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception.

“For twenty-three years, he’d thought he’d met a girl who was as pure as snow, a sad, lonely girl. Eventually, he comes to see the fullness of his wife - and the realization isn’t welcome. In the novel’s first half, Groff paints a convincing portrait of a male genius who perceives himself as heroically individual, prone to forget that his artistic confidence is the joint product of an adoring mother and a devoted wife.

(“He looked inside the apartment through the window, where the phone persisted unringing on the mantel.”) Fates and Furies sprawls as it goes, but any potential sluggishness is warded off by Groff’s powerful and exotic prose, which renders majestic even the most familiar moments of everyday life. In the first half of her absorbing new novel, Lauren Groff allows Lotto to take center stage, as we follow the couple from shotgun marriage to bohemian beginnings to Lotto’s eventual success as a playwright. By comparison, Mathilde is cool and melancholy. They have their own sorts of glamour: Lotto (short for Lancelot) is full of passion and charisma, destined for artistic greatness.

Mathilde fates and furies