Matrix: A Novel

by Lauren Groff

Hardcover, 2021

Status

Checked out
Due Mar 18, 2024

Publication

Riverhead Books (2021), Edition: First Edition/First Printing, 272 pages

Description

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)

Media reviews

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
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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.
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3 more
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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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....
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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.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member lauralkeet
Little is known about the life of the poet Marie de France, although a prevailing theory posits that she was Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury and half sister of King Henry II. Lauren Groff takes these scant details and runs with them, beginning when 17-year-old Marie arrived at the abbey on orders from
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Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Over the years, Marie became prioress and then abbess, and the abbey grew and thrived under her strong leadership.

Marie’s visions of the Virgin Mary and Eve inspire grand projects designed to fortify the abbey and keep troublesome men at bay. Marie skilfully cultivates the support of Queen Eleanor through a combination of diplomacy and payments into the royal coffers. Groff surrounds Marie with a highly capable staff, who repeatedly push the boundaries of what were considered appropriate roles for women in the Middle Ages. Marie commands respect, but more than that this community of women share a deep love for one another.

The voices of women in the Middle Ages were largely silenced and ignored by historians. Matrix was a refreshing celebration of the power of the feminine.
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LibraryThing member Hccpsk
I applaud and recommend Lauren Groff’s new book, Matrix, for many things: Groff’s fine writing, an incredibly interesting and well-drawn female protagonist, and a well-researched historical look at women’s lives in an English abbey. With that said, the story of Marie de France did not really
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work for me. Cast out of the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine for being a bastard and too ugly, Marie finds herself at the poor and struggling abbey. She takes over and manages to turn their fortunes around over many years. For me, the book plodded along with no real plot and too many random side characters, and obscure religious details — much like life in the abbey. Maybe Groff did this on purpose, and I’m sure some readers will enjoy it. I was not one of them.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
[Matrix] by [[Lauren Groff]]

Matrix is a novel that creates the life of Marie de France, a 12th century abbess and writer. There is very little actually known about her, so Groff has plenty of room to create the character she desires without worrying about appeasing historical experts. She creates a
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portrait of a woman who carves out a place of power and comfort for herself, when circumstances and the time period should make this practically impossible. Marie and Eleanor of Aquitaine have a relationship that develops over the book from afar.

The book has almost no mention of men in it, and I enjoyed imagining the lives of women in the 1100s, relying on each other to create a life worth living.
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LibraryThing member jillrhudy
Thanks to Penguin Random House for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In the ideal abbey, the nuns are liberated from the demands that society places upon other women. They are free to create their own little haven, free to love each other any way they like, free to posit a divine
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feminine and direct their prayers to Mary and female saints, free to care for one another under the soothing if demanding rhythms of the monastic routine and the holy seasons.

Under the patronage of Eleanor of Acquitaine, 12th-century Marie de France does all of this and more, starting with a poor abbey with a few underfed, demoralized nuns. She exerts amazing leadership as Abbess while becoming an author, poet, mystic, and legend.

Marie's abbey is sometimes rocked by corruption in Rome, the vicissitudes of politics, and even sometimes the demanding extremes of Marie's ambitions. The nuns must be ready to pay any tax or tribute that the authorities demand. This doesn't stop them from creating an extraordinary world that is almost like an empire, on their secluded and blessed isle. As always when women carve out exclusive space, men are both suspicious and intrusive.

This is a tour de force with compelling characterization—a hard-hitting feminist novel that rivals the best fiction of Rumer Godden on the monastic life. Groff invites the reader to imagine a history in which religion was shaped not by warriors, monks, and male church councils, but by muscular mystic nuns like Marie who simply crave scholarship, love, and peace.
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LibraryThing member Cariola
Lauren Groff is one of my favorite writers, and I was very interested to see what she would do switching from contemporary settings to a historical novel set in 12th-century abbey--and in fact, I pre-ordered this book. It did not disappoint. The main character is Marie de France, known in
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literature for her lais, perhaps the first Francophone verse written by a woman. Little is known about the real Marie, except (as she reveals in the first line of her lais and hence her name) that "My name is Marie, and I am from France." Her education, her Parisian dialect, details in the lais, and the inclusion of some Anglo-Norman influence suggest that she later lived in England, perhaps at the court of Henry II. This lack of biographical detail gives Groff free scope to invent a life for her protagonist, which she did by researching the lives of several English abbesses named Marie who lived at the time and by the use of her own imagination.

Groff's Marie is the child of rape by a high-ranking Plantagenet (perhaps even the king himself). Fascinated by the queen, Eleanor of Acquitane, Marie followed her in a Crusade and then on to England, but her unusual size, homely countenance, and intellect were perhaps the cause of her being sent to an abbey at age 17 instead of into the arms of an eager husband. Marie, once she has completed her course as a novice, will become the head of this downtrodden abbey whose numbers have been depleted by disease and hunger. [The Matrix] is the story of Marie coming into her own, realizing that this company of women of faith can achieve amazing things.

Groff is obviously familiar with the theory that a religious life was not always a calling from God, a punishment for sins, or an exile for unmarriageable daughters: it often opened doors to freedom and opportunity unavailable to those who chose the familiar route of marriage, motherhood, and subservience to men. As abbess, Marie is able to flex her significant skills in business, land management, leadership, and diplomacy. At times it would seem that she is bringing the abbey to the brink of disaster, but more often she achieves astonishing success, and the sisterhood flourishes.

So yes, this is a feminist tale, but it is also a very human one. Groff develops wonderful secondary characters, both inside the abbey and in the surrounding village, and each has a unique relationship with Marie. And despite Eleanor's apparent cruelty in sending her away from court, Marie cannot break her bond with the aging queen, finally recognizing how much, despite outward appearances, the two women have in common.

I would urge you to overlook many of the nitpicking criticisms of the novel that, in the end, have little bearing on its wonderfulness. It doesn't matter that she borrows details from the like of Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury. It doesn't matter that there is hardly any mention of the lais aside from Groff's contention that they were written to impress Elanor. This is, after all, a work of historical fiction, designated by the author at 'The Matrix: A NOVEL' (not a biography and not a history). Enter Marie's world with an open mind, and I think you will enjoy and admire it as much as I did.
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LibraryThing member maryzee
Pretty awful
LibraryThing member Tytania
I really didn't enjoy this. Can't help but compare it to THE CORNER THAT HELD THEM. I came off as a bit negative on CORNER, but at least it felt very realistic. This one is fakery. And I wasn't expecting quite so much lesbianism. No one appreciates strong, central female characters more than I do;
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and I can respect what the author must have been trying to do by including not one single male character at all. But come on. Where were the priests in all this? Who was saying mass before Marie blasphemously took over? Weren't the male leaders of the Church giving her a hard time?
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LibraryThing member lisapeet
This novel, imagining the life of Marie de France, was pure fun—especially after having read The Corner That Held Them—another tale of an abbey set a couple of centuries later—earlier this year. Groff inhabits the "what if" of history really adeptly, and Marie's story is interesting,
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spirited, and ultimately infused with a gentle affirmation of faith that doesn't grate.
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LibraryThing member write-review
Filling in Marie’s Missing Pieces

Let’s start off reviewing Lauren Groff’s latest, Matrix, by remembering another Matrix, perhaps the springboard for the novel, Marie de France. This Marie, like Groff’s Marie, lived in the 12th century, was of French origin, of Aquitaine, living most of her
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life in England. Marie de France wrote long-form narrative poetry that, among other things, gave birth to chivalric romance popular in the High Middle Ages and beyond. And her writing was iconoclastic for the time. But apart from her name and her writing, little else is known about her, and so what an interesting opportunity to conjure a life for her, that of a nun who writes a journal of her exploits, devotion, and loves, who takes nearly defunct abbey and through vision, divine and temporal, organization, compassion, and hard work, molds it into a shining, thriving enclave of women. Thus, in lyrical style, Groff tells the tale of Marie, cast out to realize her best life.

The novel opens with Marie at 17 sent away from Eleanor of Aquitaine’s court to the poorest of poor abbeys in England to serve as prioress under the aging abbess. She, of course, hates being tossed out by Eleanor, whom she adores, but in due course forms bonds, one intimate, with other new members. Almost from the beginning, she works to make improvements, and with the passing of the abbess assumes the role herself. She expands the holdings of the abbey and its income by bringing the nobles of the region to heel. She organizes her charges into productive groups managing all the affairs of the abbey, from field, to bakery, to infirmary, to their spiritual lives, and as she does, allows the women to take solace in themselves. And all this, the good and the bad, she diligently records in her personal papers kept secret during her life but discovered by the new abbess upon her death, suffering a fate the real life Marie de France didn’t, at least not totally.

As Marie de France imbued her work with the details of life and realistic views of life as it was lived, so Groff provides a good deal of background detailing the grittiness of life in the High Middle Ages and of a woman who carves her place in her times by asserting herself on many levels, among them as the matrix, or mother, of a community of women who prosper on their own.
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LibraryThing member Beth.Clarke
I don't read many books set in the 12th century in England, but I'm so glad I found this gem. Matrix is about women and religion in a male dominated society. Smart women figuring out how to advance and find happiness. Plus, it has a bit of supernatural, magic realism. It's incredibly creative and
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told with luscious prose. I loved Groff's Fates and Furies more, but Matrix is quite good.
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LibraryThing member brangwinn
Inspired by a lecture she listened to about a medieval nun, Goff took the bare facts and made Marie de France into a flesh and blood woman, who used the power of her position of abbess of an impoverished monastery. Through her determination and belief that women did have power she turns the ragtag
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community into one of power. Of course, the church did not like her. She decided she could perform mass and wrote of a female god. She begins to see herself as having papal privileges, as she and the other nuns create intimate sexual liaisons between each other. All in all, the story builds up to giving the reader a look at what it means to be a chaste, good and moral nun.
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LibraryThing member LukeS
Matrix is the quasi biography of Marie, an illegitimate millstone around the neck of Eleanor of Aquitaine, living in the second half of the twelfth century. Marie is too tall, raw-boned and unappealing to be married off and consigned to obscurity, so when she is 17, Eleanor banishes her instead to
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a nunnery. She is thus sent from the comfort and gaiety of the French court to the boggy and foggy island of Britain. In Lauren Groff’s hands, Marie’s journey promptly gratifies the reader’s expectations of Marie’s mettle, and then grows to include her magisterial and deft stewardship of the abbey. And beyond these rewards, we are treated to Marie’s mystic side, in which she sees rapturous visions which guide her earthly agenda and impress the nuns in her care of her saintly nature.

I do wonder whether Groff set out to propound the life of a saint, but it doesn’t matter. The life she provides us is, in the most straightforward way, that of a woman of vast abilities and an indomitable will. She carves out for herself and her “daughters”—the nuns in her care—an island of safety and devotion in a very hostile and suspicious world. She guides her charges through treacherous times; she takes over an impoverished abbey and and guides it through the “interesting times” of Richard the Lionheart versus his royal brother John, all the while building its holdings—a labyrinth confounds outsiders who would broach the defenses—and it becomes the leading abbey in terms of wealth and prestige on the entire British island.

Groff endows her heroine with impressive political savvy and resourcefulness—this is my favorite feature of the character and the novel. This shrewdness serves her well with her ongoing jousts with the outside world, particularly with her monarch and former close associate, Empress Eleanor. Marie also must call upon her wits when dealing with the sometimes rebellious nuns serving under her. The author handles these episodes with a deft touch, showing the abbess’s intelligence and indomitability in shining, gratifying form.

So this is a book portraying a petit monarch, a woman who decides to build an impregnable fortress-like settlement for herself as much as for English nuns. Groff shows her further assurance (as though any were necessary) as a novelist of the very first rank. Unreservedly: take it up!
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LibraryThing member akblanchard
Not much is known about the medieval poet Marie de France (fl. 1160 to 1215). Author Lauren Groff imagines her as a free-thinking nun and leader of women whose biography includes mystical, feminist visions, lesbian encounters, a trying perimenopause, and even a battle scene. There's not much of a
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plot, secondary characters are not well developed, and much is told rather than shown. Even though the novel’s pace picked up toward the end, ultimately the narrative didn't transcend its bland title and unattractive cover.
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LibraryThing member froxgirl
After the novel Fates and Furies and Florida, a contemporary short story collection, who'da thunk that a historical fiction about an abbess of the 1100s would be next from Lauren Groff? The story of Marie, half sister of Eleanor of Aquitaine, is a remarkable tribute to a headstrong woman who is
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rejected by her queen and banished to a convent. What Marie accomplishes for her sisters and how her spiritual visions create a heavenly earthbound community is an engrossing story of perseverance, vengeance, and self-knowledge.
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LibraryThing member ccayne
Marie and the abbey came alive in Groff''s novel. In general, I don't read much historical fiction but I am a fan of the author.
The only similarity to her previous books was that the abbey was a closed society moving towards a kind of utopia. I loved how Marie could see her way to the future, even
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without visions. She knew what was needed for all to thrive and played on the nun's strengths. A glimpse of what it could be like were society different?
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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
This is the sort of historical novel I devoured as a teenager, and have craved ever since. Except for Hilary Mantel, no one has done for me what Lauren Groff does here since Anya Seton, Jean Plaidy/Victoria Holt and that crowd. I plunged into the world of medieval nuns and relished every cold,
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dirty, disease-prone moment of it. Inspired by what very little is known of the life of Marie de France and conflating her with the Abbess Mary of Shaftesbury, Groff has created a woman of such complexity and substance that, history be damned, we must believe she lived her life just this way. (There are, in fact, historians who have speculated that Marie and Mary were one and the same woman.)

Marie, illegitimate half-sister of Henry II, is an unattractive giantess with no marriage prospects, and so is bundled off to a remote impoverished Abbey by Henry's wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Taking on a role she never would have chosen for herself, Marie eventually turns the fortunes of the Abbey around, making it prosperous, directing feats of engineering that result in the design and execution of an elaborate protective labyrinth, a fine Mother House, and a dam with a system of locks to assure a constant supply of water for the sisters, their animals and gardens. This is a world not just run by women, but exclusively for women. Wealthy widows confer hefty dowries on the Abbey in exchange for the opportunity to live out their remaining days in peaceful refuge. After one unfortunate incident involving a crew of what Marie had considered necessary workmen, she resolved that never again would men be allowed into the Abbey for any reason. Not even priests were exempt from the proscription. When Marie assumed the priestly duties of saying Mass and hearing confessions, it was nearly her downfall, but she remained steadfast and prevailed even in this. This novel has nearly everything...lovely prose, crystalline characters, historical detail, drama, sexual tension, mild suspense, hints of royal intrigue. (Oh, and it might just expand your vocabulary, as it certainly did mine.)
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LibraryThing member mojomomma
Nuns having sex.
LibraryThing member Perednia
A tall, gawky bastard of nobility is sent away by Eleanor to a lowly English convent. Under Marie's care, the convent thrives and becomes rich. Because of her visions, it expands and protects itself. She struggles with wanting to be loved as she loves, with the machinations of both court and the
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papacy, with sisters who don't agree with her projects. Through the years, she deals with hubris and humility. On both mystical and practical levels, Marie's journey is transformative. Groff's lyrical prose adds to the poignancy of Marie's yearnings and learnings.
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LibraryThing member lycomayflower
This story of the life of a 12th century nun was both strange and deeply compelling. The sentence-level writing is a treat, as is getting to watch Marie take a life that was thrust upon her essentially as punishment and make it into something marvelous to behold. The most surprising thing for me in
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reading this was the way images would not necessarily strike me during my reading but would later percolate up and stick with me for days.
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LibraryThing member Gwendydd
I didn't get very far into this before I gave up.

The curse of being a specialist in any topic is that it becomes very hard to enjoy media about that topic. In this case, I studied medieval history in graduate school and found myself yelling at this book too much to enjoy it. A few particular things
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that bothered me: when Marie arrives at the abbey, they offer to give her a bath, and she tries to refuse because she just bathed a few weeks ago. Medieval people bathed all the time. A lot. They had bath-houses. They loved baths. They would never turn down a bath. Marie is also surprised to learn what the life of a nun is like, and how often they pray. This would have been very common knowledge to all medieval people, especially someone who is literate.

If a book is good enough, I can put aside my critiques and enjoy it, but I wasn't finding much that was redeeming in this book. Marie is not particularly likeable, at least in the opening chapters, and I didn't find anything compelling in her story.
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LibraryThing member Dabble58
A delightful and spiritual wander in the cloisters of a 12th century convent. Groff brings the world to life, pulls us in to the life of her main character, Marie, shows us the beauty and the hardship of the times.
Her writing is incandescent and, occasionally, over the top. This is easily forgiven
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because reading the book is much like enjoying a layered French pastry-flavours blend and are separate in turns, the taste can overwhelm but is then leavened…

I felt a bit at a loss at times. Marie is like a superhero, managing everything from crusades to construction with ease. I’d like to have seen some of her learning, figure out how she set up spies and informers to keep the Abbey safe, how she persuaded people to pay and support her. Instead she just strides places and rules with her height and “ugly” face… Apparently the real Marie was an accomplished poet; this is barely mentioned here.

It was also hard to care for the characters- they are often described like lush paintings- rich but ultimately flat. Still, I couldn’t put the book down, excited to see what the nuns would do next. There are threats mentioned but they don’t seem real. In fact the entire book reads like an immersion into the senses and taken as that it is quite enjoyable. The writing is splendid.
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LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl
This is the story of a Medieval woman's life, from when she is sent from France to Eleanor of Aquitaine's English Court to the end of her life. Marie is judged to be neither beautiful nor sweet-natured and so is sent off to take holy orders and run a small abbey. On arriving, she finds twenty women
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on the edge of starvation. What follows is the story of how she adjusted to the life she was forced into.

Lauren Groff writes beautifully of both the harsh realities of life at that time and of the creation of a vibrant community of women, existing outside of patriarchal society they are surrounded by. This is an unusual angle to look at this time and place, from the point of view of an unbeautiful older woman in a position of power.
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LibraryThing member hairball
After Rizzio, I wasn’t up for another period piece. I tried. I failed.
LibraryThing member Dreesie
I admit it, I almost did not read this book. Only my completionist self staring at the 2022 Tournament of Books longlist got me to read it--and a surprising lack of queue in one of my library systems. I loved Fates and Furies, but I really did not like Arcadia. I also did not much enjoy Florida,
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but short stories are not my favorite so that's not surprising. I have also seen such mixed reviews about this one.

And this surprised me. I really enjoyed it (other than the fact that there are no hummingbirds outside of North/South America and the Caribbean--certainly not in 12th century England! p 83). I also don't read a lot of historical fiction taking place in the Middle Ages--now I want to read [book:The Care of Nuns: The Ministries of Benedictine Women in England During the Central Middle Ages|42686873], the book and author of which is the first paragraph of Groff's acknowledgements and is much more my style.

Here we have a vaguely historic figure, about which little is known (even her name). Groff has run with this possible real person (one person? more than one?) and created solid historical fiction utilizing historical research done by actual historians. To make her character illegimate is clever, it explains both her upper class/royal origin that is assumed because of her literacy, while also explaining her invisibility in the records. Making her a high-ranking nun also sounds feasible. But creating this amazing community of women, with their various skills, working together to create wealth, health, happiness, good works, and more is so unlikely but is also just dreamy. So many women were given to the nuns by their own families because of poverty, perceived weakness or ugliness, the desire to bribe the church or God--many of these women had no choice but to be sent to the church. Groff's vision to let these women find their own strength is magnificent.

And I want to read The Care of Nuns to see if any of this could even be possible LOL.
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LibraryThing member annbury
This historical novel set in a medieval nunnery is driven by its central character. Marie de France is a bastard relative of the royal house, and Queen Eleanor (of Aquitaine, but now of Angleterre) must find a place for her. But Marie is too big and too gauche to marry off, so off she is sent to a
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poor and insignificant nunnery. Marie is miserable, but gradually takes hold, and in time converts the nunnery into a prosperous and protected haven for its nuns. Then, she begins to have visions, which expand her power and reach. The novel tells the story of her life, and is a compelling story. The writing is a pleasure to read, sometimes ornamented, sometimes shockingly plain, but appropriate to its time and place. Marie is an improbable character, but her story keeps one turning the pages.
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Awards

National Book Award (Finalist — Fiction — 2021)
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2023)
Lambda Literary Award (Finalist — 2022)
Audie Award (Finalist — 2022)
The Morning News Tournament of Books (Quarterfinalist — 2022)

Language

Original language

English
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