Fates and Furies

One of the many reasons I admire Lauren Groff is her total inability to shy away from a narrative challenge. She saw the way in which the story of a strong, difficult marriage should be told; that the truest portrait of a marriage must reveal all the scars and injuries and oddities, all of them, in each individual as well as in the relationship (which is kind of a two-headed character, as well); and she put it all on the page. It gets so ugly and loud that it's hard to look at. But it doesn't resolve in regret.

Apparently, based on the reviews, this book is very polarizing, but I thought (other than one bad chapter) it was excellent. It probably was a 4.5 star book for me, but I'm going with rounding up.

The book examines a marriage in two parts. Fates tells the story of the husband, Lotto. Furies tells the story of the wife, Mathilde. Saving the best for last, Mathilde's story is the more compelling of the two. Once I started the Furies section, I couldn't put the book down until it was done.

This book strikes me as what you'd come out with if [b:Gone Girl|19288043|Gone Girl|Gillian Flynn|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1397056917s/19288043.jpg|13306276] and [b:The Marriage Plot|10964693|The Marriage Plot|Jeffrey show more Eugenides|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328736940s/10964693.jpg|15668403] had a baby. The characters are drawn and revealed in a sophisticated way, but it has some of the darkness and elements of surprise that I don't usually associate with literary fiction. Groff's writing style is sophisticated - - partly in the words she uses, but what I really respected was how she handles the passage of time. This story is not told in a linear way, but for the reader, it is extremely seamless. I never had to think about where we were in time or strain to pick up the thread of the story, yet it is moving between time periods. It just seemed so effortless, but I can't imagine that it actually was.

There was one self indulgent chapter where Groff shares a play written by Lotto in the middle of the book to reveal something. I have no idea what she was revealing at the time I read it - - and it was slow and boring. If I went back and re-read it, I'm sure it foreshadowed something or revealed something about the characters, but I'm honestly just not that interested to put myself through reading it again. But one boring chapter? Hey, I'll take it.

If a reader wants to be critical, I think they could find some other issues with this book - - but I felt that Groff did a tremendous job of creating believability where one might have skepticism, and by the end, I was so intrigued I was quite happy to play along. My inner critic was definitely shut down by the story telling, the interesting characters, the creative telling of the story, and the suspense. When I read the reviews of others, the critical ones, I can nod and say yes, yes that's true. But while I was reading it, I didn't care one whit. show less

One of those books I went into knowing nothing about, it had just been so breathlessly recommended by folks I knew that I decided to just go for it. To start with I was rather fascinated and delighted, the prose is florid and over-the-top at times, but in a fun way, and the portrait-of-the-playwright-as-a-young-horndog was fun and funny. Lotto is a great, ridiculous, hillarious, and over-bearing presence, a comical and biting satire of the male ego that had this male reader alternately laughing at the over-the-top boorishness or cringing when things struck just a little too close to home. A middling actor and (as we are told over and over again) a brilliant playwright, Lotto's utter obliviousness to his wife Mathilde's internal life is show more remarkable but at the same time not to far off the mark, so I was really looking forward to hearing "her story" of their marriage in the back half of this book (first and second halves my audiobook was expertly read by Will Damron and Julia Whelan, respectively, and they do a great job with the range of voices, accents, and narrative registers Groff uses throughout). Finally, I thought, we'll see what's going on in Mathilde's world!

Well, yes, I was definitely surprised by the "secret history" that Groff weaves for us in the second half of the book, but not really in a good way. The plot, already plenty melodramatic in Lotto's half of the novel, becomes straight up over-the-top Gothic in the second (Or perhaps more Dickensian? I think Groff was aiming at all of the above, with plenty of Shakespeare and Sophocles thrown in the mix as well... It's a lot). I won't spoil things here but suffice it to say that Mathilde has more than her fair share of secrets and skeletons in the closet, and if you were expecting a realistic portrait of a marriage, I don't think this is going to satisfy that desire. Not to say that this fictional relationship isn't plenty nuanced and detailed, but it's definitely further into [b:Gone Girl|19288043|Gone Girl|Gillian Flynn|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1554086139s/19288043.jpg|13306276] territory than I ever imagined it would be, but where that book carefully seeds the wild twists and turns that eventually arrive, Fates & Furies is somehow both more far-fetched and less interesting. And where both the sunny and drunken excesses of Lotto's youth and the starving artist grind in New York both felt lived in, Mathilde's secret childhood feels like a cartoon.

All in all, happy I read this one, would read other work by Groff in the future (but probably short stories instead of novels), but overall I'm quite surprised that this one became such a hit. show less

In Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff asks us readers to pay attention, maybe more attention than I’m able or willing to give to this book. I’m expected to remember many names, which may come up again, pages later, maybe in scenes from earlier or later times or from someone else’s viewpoint.

Every sentence, complete or incomplete, though, is glorious. Each leads me on and keeps me wanting to find out what follows. But, the sentences, especially the early ones, come so quickly that after the first fifty pages they became too much for me, and I had to put the book away for a while.

A few days later I picked it up again and began skipping and skimming, to the end at first, then here and there, piecing stories together by reading parts show more for as long as they still seemed interesting, then going back or forward to catch more of this story, leaving flags wherever I left off, not keeping notes, trying to slow-read this fast reading novel, and finally covering it all.

The novel itself skips back and forth, explains events before or after they are told, may tell the same event from at least two perspectives, plays deftly with time and place, so invites the reader to look ahead and back too.

It’s a story of two people in love, in a long marriage, who do and don’t understand each other, who we learn about slowly as the book progresses. In the first half of the book, "Fates", we learn mostly about Lotto, who becomes a playwright and who is pretty much one thing. Then in "Furies" we get to know Mathilde, who is much more complex and interesting.
This book is filled with layers of meaning, versions, explanations, twists. It’s not like Groff’s earlier "Arcadia", not like her later "Matrix" or "The Vaster Wilds". It almost cries out for a re-reading. show less

I loved this book in the beginning. I found the prose artful and engaging, abstract in that it tended more toward train of thought than adhering to the rules of proper grammar, which I really liked. (It wasn't Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway train of thought - more like when you jot down ideas to get them on paper and don't go back to edit them.) It was entertaining, insightful, well-paced . . . and then I entered Part 2.

The book is sectioned into Part 1, Fates, and Part 2, Furies. Both are the tale of a marriage, the first as seen through the eyes of the husband, the second through the eyes of the wife. I didn't like the wife's perspective as much. It seemed more focused on the way she viewed herself, the real her, versus the way her show more husband saw her, the way she wanted to be.

This book is very different from what I usually read. It was written in a different style, had a different subject matter, and was told in a different manner. I didn't like the characters, but I liked the writing so much it didn't matter. (I often don't like the characters in books.) If the second half failed to please me as much as the first, it may have been due to the fact that it was a complete departure from what I was expecting. 4.5-5 stars. show less

Ostensibly this is supposed to be a novel about marriage, but I think the question Laura Goff is actually posing in this tale – which just happens to involve a marriage – is: “To what extent are we capable of truly knowing ourselves?”

Lancelot “Lotto” Satterwhite, raised to believe himself a young prince – wealthy, charismatic, handsome – fashions a whole life around this self-delusion. So convincing is he, the people around him become willing participants in helping to create and maintain the self-delusion. He never seems to question why he should be so universally beloved even though he rarely gives more than he gets; why he shouldn’t attain celebrity as a playwright, in spite of the fact that he’s never really show more written anything; or why he shouldn’t be entitled to the “perfect wife,” in spite of the fact that he almost never bothers to wonder what it is that he has to offer her. His life, in short, seems wholly shaped by the “Fates” referenced in the title of the novel.

Whereas Lotto’s inamorata, Mathilde, constructs a life shaped by Furies – ancient Greek spirits believed to wreak vengeance on those who commit crimes. Having been raised to believe she possesses a fundamentally wicked nature, it never seems to occur to Mathilde that there are other ways to pay for college than pimping herself to a ghastly older man who enjoys debasing her; or that she might possess enough love to share with both a husband and a child; or that she might be worthy of love without having to constantly earn it.

Given that Goff is supposed to be such a terrific writer, one might wonder why this novel has received so many so-so reviews from readers. I suspect it comes down to frustration – frustration over the inability of her characters to engage in honest self-reflection. Most of the stories we’re drawn to – as children, and later as adults - contain strong character arcs: either humble everymen who develop into heroes, or heroes who experience a hubristic plummet into humility. In contrast, no one in this novel (with the notable exception of Lotto’s younger sister Rachel) ever learns, changes, matures, or grows.

Where Goff’s talent shows itself to best advantage is in the way she has crafted this modern morality tale. Unveiling both halves of the relationship at once would have been a more conventional approach. But by first presenting the marriage through Lotto’s eyes and then, later, through Mathilde’s eyes, Goff forces her readers to explore how these differences in perception are shaped not just by who the characters are, but who they believe themselves to be.

Which, in turn, spawns a host of weighty questions – questions sure to trigger many a juicy book club discussion. To what extent are we, as adults, able to defy or transcend the forces that mold us throughout our psychologically fragile childhood years? To what extent do we unconsciously (or consciously) become complicit in sustaining the self-delusions of the people in our lives? Do we have a “duty” to seek self-understanding? (And, if so, a duty to who? Ourselves? Our family? The people we love?) Is being able to experience love predicated on self-awareness? On honesty? On being able to love (or at least forgive) ourselves? And what constitutes a “good marriage” anyway – is it the ability to gain from one’s partner the support one needs, or the support one “deserves”?

Fairly early on, readers will realize that Goff intends her work to be appreciated not just as a story, but as a literary construct. In addition to the deliberately artful method of storytelling described above, there are plenty of references to Greek plays and myths – including frequent bracketed comments that – in the style of a Greek chorus – constantly comment on the main action of the story. But none of this need distract from the fact that many of us continue to live lives shaped by fate and fury, if only we possess the self-awareness to perceive it. show less

Lotto is excessively tall, handsome, white, rich, full of the self-confidence of an actor (he is an actor; later a playwright), charismatic, and ferociously loyal and faithful to the woman he loves, his wife, Mathilde. Mathilde is excessively tall, strikingly beautiful, white, rich, brimming with steely determination, ruthlessly loyal and faithful to the man she loves, her husband, Lotto. They make a lovely couple and their story, right up to the surprising death of Lotto in mid-life is one of romantic hardships braved together and eventual success (Lotto’s as a playwright) earned on their own terms. But the story continues after Lotto’s death and both thereafter and through numerous flashbacks to Mathilde’s life before Lotto we show more learn that she, at least, has never been fully what she seemed.

It’s a novel, you might say, of two halves. But are they equal halves?

Mathilde’s backstory is so extreme that it makes a nonsense of her life of more than 20 years with Lotto. She is revealed as essentially dissembling, diabolical, murderous, unsentimental, even fiendish. But she’s always been this way, we learn. Meanwhile Lotto’s character remains consistent in the second half of the novel. There are no stunning turnarounds, though we do see that he has been ignorant of more than just Mathilde’s true character over the course of his life.

I think the concept for this novel was perhaps more interesting than the accomplishment. This, despite the fact that Groff is so evidently a fine writer. I thoroughly enjoyed her synopses of Lotto’s plays and the unfinished opera. There is verve in the writing and it would still have been a fine novel even if it had ended at the midpoint. However, our discovery that Mathilde is practically a Bond-villain in her duplicitousness undercuts what had been achieved to that point. For surely, given that this novel is written in close third-person, we do not have two sides of the same story. We only have one story for which we were deliberately misled by the author throughout the first half. And that doesn’t work, at least for me. It’s not merely that Lotto and Mathilde have different viewpoints on the same events. I hardly think that would be surprising. Rather, it’s that Lotto’s viewpoint is lessened to be merely naive. What we are left with is simply Mathilde’s story with the now childish and child-like Lotto in the shadows. And in fact, from the novelist’s perspective and ours as readers, that’s all we’ve ever had.

Lauren Groff is an exceptional writer whose work I will continue to read with interest. Nevertheless, on this occasion, not recommended. show less