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Matrix (2021)

by Lauren Groff

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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1,6068610,948 (3.86)174
Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough? Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.… (more)
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» See also 174 mentions

English (83)  German (1)  Spanish (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (86)
Showing 1-5 of 83 (next | show all)
Imagining an authoritarian feminist separatist enclave, this novel is set in the 12th Century with a quite 21st Century sensibility. As a hook it drafts in the historical figure of Marie de France, of whom not much is known, but who was unlikely to have been this: illegitimate child of a king, who rises to power and transforms a poor abbey into the mightiest in England, with spies throughout all the European halls of power, cut off from her superiors and the outside world through construction of a labyrinth surrounding the abbey, banishing all men and boys from the area, acting as a priest, having affairs with fellow nuns, and having visions of the Virgin Mary and Eve kissing each other.

It's a fantasy with contemporary appeal to make up for its ahistoricism. In a further sign that Groff has at least one, if not one and a half, eyes on the current day, she includes a number of suggestions that society's failure to follow Marie's example in the following centuries led to global warming. A very odd thing to include, really!

The prose is largely pretty good; the pace of the story is breakneck (Marie is 21, now she's 32, suddenly she's 45...). It's ultimately a political novel that will appeal to a kind of politics - its listing and advertisement as one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year makes all the sense in the world. As literature, it's fine, enjoyable, and well promoted. ( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
Relegated to being a nun for being unmarriable, she’s a huge and ugly girl, Marie uses these attributes to become a powerful abbess. She turns an impoverished abbey wealthy by sheer will and then built the means to protect it from evil. I should have liked this book much more than I did. I think two things held me back: too much sex for nuns and a lot of the book is telling rather than showing slowing it down. Still a decent read. ( )
  KarenMonsen | Feb 10, 2024 |
Groff is an amazing writer, I think she is too intelligent for me :(. I lost meaning during parts of the book because I could not follow some of the information (some of it due to historical and religious issues that I did not know enough about). However, I grasped enough to have a deep respect for her ability to write. Many beautiful passages that I could grasp. Will read more of her books. ( )
  carolfoisset | Feb 7, 2024 |
I really enjoyed the historical aspect of this novel. Marie, the bastard sister of Eleanor of Aquitaine, is hustled off to a convent to get her off the royal dime. Marie takes over the struggling convent and reverses its fortune from rags to riches.

While I enjoyed the story, the style of writing often frustrated me. The author attempted to old it up by running on sentences and using a glut of unfamiliar ancient language. It often added depth to the novel but it was so intense that I was often distracted by it, growing straight up annoyed in the second half of the book. ( )
1 vote Tosta | Jan 17, 2024 |
I nearly bailed on this a few pages in, kinda turned off by the "fake history" aspect. Glad I didn't. What's happening here is actually pretty remarkable.

Groff takes what (extremely little) is know of Marie de France's life and builds a remarkable biography around it. It's an unlikely story, but of course history is full of unlikely stories, and all the details are well researched and feel real. Mary feels both supernatural and real.

Also worth pointing out is the language. Groff weaves archaic and convent-life words through the text, creating a writing style that feels old and contemporary, and quite sharp. ( )
  aleshh | Jan 12, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 83 (next | show all)
Lauren Groff's Matrix is an inspiring novel that truly demonstrates the power women wield, regardless of the era. It has sisterhood, love, war, sex — and many graphic deaths, all entangled in a once-forgotten abbey in the English countryside. Matrix introduces a warlike poet-nun, based on the real medieval author Marie de France, who challenges the Catholic church and the very foundations of patriarchy — while also exploring womanhood and unbridled sexuality....Abbess Marie, venerated and ambitious, is driven by a mission to achieve greatness, something many women can identify with today. Matrix exposes the complexity of being a woman living in a world where men make all the rules, regardless of the era. But it also may leave you wondering whether this is a story about one woman's feminist aspirations — or her overzealous ambition.
added by Lemeritus | editNPR, Keishel Williams (Sep 6, 2021)
 
Lauren Groff is one of the most beloved and critically acclaimed fiction writers in the country. And now that we’ve endured almost two years of quarantine and social distancing, her new novel about a 12th-century nunnery feels downright timely....When “Matrix” opens, Marie, all of 17 years old, is appointed prioress of a dilapidated abbey, founded centuries earlier, where a few nuns remain scavenging for food. The beautiful queen, whom Marie adores, frames this assignment as a great honor, but the young woman knows she’s “being thrown away like rubbish . . . sent into her living death alone.” ...Unable to leave and unwilling to fail, Marie brings her considerable physical and mental powers to bear on the abbey’s financial and managerial problems...inevitably, her efforts will conflict with the masculine tropes and rituals embedded in the Roman Catholic faith. How far she can push back against that outer world without provoking forces arrayed against her generates much of the novel’s suspense.
added by Lemeritus | editWashington Post, Ron Charles (pay site) (Aug 31, 2021)
 
Groff is a heavily allusive writer whose narratives typically carry a freight of sophisticated references. In her new novel, “Matrix,” the work of Marie de France — the 12th-century poet who leavened her traditional Breton lais with a little fairy dust — provides Groff a literary springboard into a past whose features offer a mirror to our own time....Female ambition and power are the central themes of “Matrix,” a math-y title that’s hard to pry off the science fiction film franchise. But the word originates from “mater,” which is Latin for mother, and thus associated with the Virgin, whose second apparition reveals Eve as the “first matrix.” In Marie’s exalted perception, her womb brought death into the world; and without Eve there could be no Mary, “no salvatrix,” and thus no deliverance....From its inauspicious beginning in the person of a sullen, selfish, godless teenager banished by an empress to perish in squalor, Marie’s transformation is that of a woman upon whom greatness is not thrust but slowly gathers. An orphan entrusted with the lives of others, calling herself their mother, gradually, by force of will, by dint of hard experience, becomes exactly that. As she reflects on her deathbed, “greatness was not the same as goodness”; but it does make for a more compelling story line.
added by Lemeritus | editNew York Times, Kathryn Harrison (pay site) (Aug 31, 2021)
 
Groff (Florida) fashions a boldly original narrative based on the life and legend of 12th-century poet Marie de France. After Marie is banished to a poverty-stricken British abbey by Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine at age 17 in 1158, she transforms from a reluctant prioress into an avid abbess.... Transcendent prose and vividly described settings bring to life historic events, from the Crusades to the papal interdict of 1208. Groff has outdone herself with an accomplishment as radiant as Marie’s visions.
added by Lemeritus | editPublisher's Weekly (Jun 2, 2021)
 

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Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough? Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.

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Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.

At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough?

Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.
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