Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
Title: Fates and Furies
Author: Lauren Groff
Pages: 390
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Personal Copy
Format: Hardcover
Summary (back of book):
They meet in the final months of college, and by graduation, they have married. It’s 1991. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. There are lean, romantic years that follow: potluck parties in a Manhattan basement apartment; a wilting acting career that doesn’t pay the bills; a household that seems to run on good luck and good sex. A decade or so later, though, Lotto and Mathilde are on their way. He is a world-famous playwright, she is integral to his success. Their life and marriage are the envy of friends, the very definition of successful partnership.
It is with an electric thrill, then, that the reader realizes things are even more remarkable than they have seemed. In an emotionally complicated twist, the perspective shifts, and what began as a story about one extraordinary union becomes so much more. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, in prose vibrant and original, Fates and Furies is a profoundly moving, surprising, and provocative novel about the yoke joining love, art, and power, and about the influence of perception. Exquisitely imagined, it is a book that defies expectation, stirring both the mind and the heart.
Review:
I loved this book.
The story was interesting and engaging. The characters were fully drawn. The second half of the book completely threw me for a loop. I totally understand why this was a National Book Award finalist.
The first half of the book is told from the perspective of Lotto. The second half is told from the perspective of Mathilde. The evolution of my feelings towards Mathilde took many turns. I went between hate, love, sympathetic, confused. She’s so much more complicated than she is presented in the first half of the book.
The writing and character development is fantastic. Lauren Groff deserves so much praise for this book. This is a story that will stay with me for quite some time.
I’m going to give it to my dad to read this winter. Please consider picking up a copy for yourself using this link - it’s a way to support this site!
