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Fates and Furies: A Novel by Lauren Groff
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Fates and Furies: A Novel (edition 2015)

by Lauren Groff (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
3,7952113,236 (3.59)236
"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. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. 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. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. 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. 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. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart"--… (more)
Member:michellereads
Title:Fates and Furies: A Novel
Authors:Lauren Groff (Author)
Info:Riverhead Books (2015), 400 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:None

Work Information

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

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» See also 236 mentions

English (206)  Dutch (1)  Latvian (1)  Piratical (1)  All languages (209)
Showing 1-5 of 206 (next | show all)
I was a little surprised at how negatively my book circle members reacted to this novel.

The first section centers on Lotto (Lancelot) Satterwhite, scion of a wealthy but strange Florida family, given all the advantages. But his controlling mother disowns him, disapproving of his fairy-tale marriage, and, struggling as an actor, he is supported emotionally and financially by his wife Mathilde, his aunt, his sister, his friends from school, until his eventual and remarkable success as a playwright. He loves his wife, trusts his friends, and seems the golden boy. I got somewhat tired of it. When his story ends, Mathilde's steps out of his shadow. Who is she really? We have learned so little about her as the novel concentrates on Lotto. And there is a lot to learn. She, of course, is one of the furies, but how much of her story is true? Her early life, her odd family, are completely hidden from her husband, but drive her actions and her own need for control and revenge. The author is not above using spectacular events to punctuate the narrative, both in the forward journey of the plot and the backward look at origins, and I suspect some of the group found the author as controlling as the characters. But I enjoyed the story, in spite of some eyebrow-raising coincidences at the end . ( )
  ffortsa | Mar 19, 2024 |
Spoilers Abound.

I found myself talking back to the book after having read & returned it. I liked the first half. The second half was difficult and I didn't really believe it.
Why was the gallery owner a sadist? Why did he expect her to want to stay with him when he mistreated her? Now as I'm writing I wonder -- did she respond sexually to the mistreatment & so he thought it was OK? But she responded so strongly to her husband in sex, and he wasn't a sadist. I am no expert but it seems inconsistent to me.
Was there a reason why the Uncle cut her off? Why did he adopt her if he didn't want to support her? He was rich and it would have been easy for him to pay for college. Why did the Uncle cave when she blackmailed him? He could have moved the painting and denied it all -- so he wanted to pay. Why then & not for college?
Can you really contact the FBI and tell them you have oodles of absolutely incriminating documents about a financial criminal and then tell them Never Mind? Was the private investigator so good that the FBI couldn't duplicate any of her investigation?

And....
The mother was shown thinking about how much she had done for her son. Was it that she rescued his son? I expected to find that the mother had bankrolled and supported the plays but that wasn't the case.
I don't know what I think of the man. He took his wife as he wanted her to be and never saw beyond that. Same with his friends.

I think the writing is skillful and talented but it left such bad feelings.
  franoscar | Mar 12, 2024 |
Immensely enjoyed reading this (on recommendation by a friend). Taken as a whole, the prose style for each part of the book was mesmerizing. Where Fates, and following Lotto was embued with a sense of longing and dream-like composition, Furies and Mathilde had a distinctly purposeful cadence. Hers was full of anger, even a kind of defiance not only against her family members but perhaps even against the readers --- as if to prove something to us all. ( )
  postsbygina | Feb 27, 2024 |
Put forward as the story of a marriage, and perhaps of Marriage, but I'm not having it. Yes, a marriage is here all right, but this is basically a story of two individuals, of their own histories and aspects. Their marriage is a structure of co-dependence, and I couldn't argue that it's much more. He needs her practical care and her adoration, and the self-congratulation that comes with believing he stole the heart of purity incarnate, but never has interest in her life before meeting him (he has a vague sense that her childhood and adolescence weren't all that pleasant, but he's not curious as long as she didn't fuck anyone before him), and has no interest in her inner life with him except as her moods affect her displays of affection for him. She needs him as an anchor and as a kind lover, as somewhere safe to roost, but she closes much of herself off to him (not that he cares to test her resolve) and remorselessly hides and dissembles her actions to prevent the possibility of his deep desire for children being met.

That's quite a far cry from what I believe the common understanding of the marriage ideal to be, which somewhere includes the desire to know, and maybe even to try meeting, the inner needs of the loved one. Lotto and Mathilde are more self-centered, and the story of the relationship they create together is far less than the story of them as individuals.

As those individuals, Mathilde is the more interesting of the two, and thus the second half of the novel, which is her half, was I thought the more interesting read. Supported by a horrific incident from early childhood, she believes herself to in some essential sense be evil, or harbor evil within her. Her lonely and disturbing upbringing not helping in any way, we can wonder to what extent her belief has any validity (she's no Gone Girl, at any rate), but it's one of her foundations of self-identity, and one she vows to never show Lotto. She is the character who experiences true torment, to which Lotto can only offer up some unimpressive self-pity of the priveleged in competition. Advantage, Mathilde.

She displays the most well-known trait of those characters of Greek mythology that the title of the novel implicitly identifies her with, though she also has enough feeling to hold back the righteous vengeance of the Furies when a greater good is at stake. This alone makes her more complex a character than the mostly shallow "genius" that is her husband, who carries the weight of the first half of the novel on his golden shoulders.

But all that summary without taking note of the gorgeous and complex prose... which is enough to keep one going even if one is not enraptured by these characters and the fairly bleak beating heart of the novel. ( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
3.5 stars ( )
  EllieBhurrut | Jan 24, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 206 (next | show all)
‘Fates and Furies,’’ Lauren Groff’s pyrotechnic new novel, tells the story of a marriage and of marriage writ large. It is also an exploration of character — good, evil, flat, round, genetic, forged by circumstance, all of the above — and a wild play upon literary history. Groff grafts the contemporary fiction of suburban anomie and New York manners onto künstlerroman, myth, and epic in a dazzling fusion of classic and (post)modern, tragedy and comedy.
 
Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and “Fates and Furies” is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers — with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout.
 
The novel tells the story of Lotto and Mathilde Satterwhite. He is the darling of a prosperous Florida family – “Lotto was special. Golden”. She, an apparent “ice princess”, is the survivor of a past about which her husband has only the fuzziest idea beyond it being “sad and dark”, and above all “blank behind her”. The first half of the book offers Lotto’s view of their life together as he rises from charming but failed actor to celebrated playwright, thanks in no small part to Mathilde’s editorial finesse. The second half reveals that Mathilde has, through implacable willpower, transcended circumstances that read like a hotchpotch of Greek tragedy, fable and detective novel. Much of what Lotto takes for granted in his good fortune, it turns out, is due to Mathilde’s ruthless machination, right down to their marriage itself. She genuinely loves him, but she initially set out to win him for mercenary reasons.
 
Lotto’s story is fairly plausible, a life that might transpire in the world the rest of us inhabit; Mathilde’s story contains more outlandishly fictional twists than those of David Copperfield, The Goldfinch’s Theo Decker, and Becky Sharp combined.
 

» Add other authors (12 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Lauren Groffprimary authorall editionscalculated
Damron, WillNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Whelan, JuliaNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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"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. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. 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. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. 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. 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. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart"--

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A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation.

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. 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.

At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. 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. 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. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.
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