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I’ve seen quite a few mixed reviews of Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies and wasn’t so very keen to read it but I got curious about it and had to find out for myself whether it was brilliant or so-so or terrible. It seems that many people don’t like the first half but those who stick with it and get to the second half end up liking that part better. So I began reading with low expectations. Perhaps it was this that helped me fall into the book, I don’t know, but I certainly didn’t struggle to read it or like it. In the end, I didn’t find the book brilliant but I did like it very much.
The story is that of a marriage told from both sides. The first part is told from Lancelot “Lotto” Satterwhite’s point of view. He grew up in Florida in a wealthy family, his father, Gawain, having made a fortune selling bottled water. But his father died young and left Lotto and his sister to the care of an increasingly distant yet controlling mother and Aunt Sallie who ran the household. Left to run wild, Lotto turned to sex and drugs and alcohol and when his mother found out, she sent him away to an all-boys boarding school. There he had few friends, but this bright, very tall boy discovered the joys of Shakespeare and determined to go off to college and become an actor.
Near the end of his senior year of college he met Mathilde, statuesque, beautiful, smart. The charismatic Lotto gave up seducing women and decided to marry Mathilde. He believed her to be pure and because she was pure he considered her his savior. He failed in the real world as an actor but in a dark night of the soul moment, discovered he had a talent for writing plays. Soon he became a famous playwright and grew wealthy in the process. Until his mother died, he saw not a penny of his inheritance because she was so angry he had married without her permission that she cut him off financially.
In spite of his profligate sex life pre-marriage, he remained loyal to Mathilde throughout, forever worrying that this pure, saintly woman would leave him:
If she was happy, it meant she wouldn’t leave him; and it had become painfully apparent over their short marriage that he was not worth the salt she sweated. The woman was a saint. She saved, fretted, somehow paid their bills when he brought in nothing.
Mathilde, of course, was no saint. Because of a terrible family tragedy when she was a very young girl, her parents basically abandoned her. They shipped her off to a grandmother who didn’t want her and who then shipped her off to another grandmother who made her sleep in a closet. Mathilde was French, born Aurelie, and when she was a teenager she was shipped off to her uncle’s house. He lived in the United States and left her to raise herself. He was wealthy, however, so she was never wanting for anything but attention. Unable to make friends at school, she became Mathilde, a girl who was angry and hard, who would not let the world take advantage of her, and who was very, very lonely.
She was also terrified of Lotto abandoning her like everyone else in her life did. She never talked about certain parts of her life:
Great swaths of her life were white space to her husband. What she did not tell him balanced neatly with what she did. Still, there are untruths made of words and untruths made of silences, and Mathilde had only ever lied to Lotto in what she never said.
Any husband paying attention might wonder what she was hiding, but that is one advantage to being married to a charismatic, rather self-absorbed man. She did quite a few things he was never even aware of not least of which was edit his plays to make them better. And how she managed to hide the ongoing and ferocious war between her and Lotto’s mother without Lotto once suspecting a thing is beyond me.
As much as they both feared the other leaving them, in the end Lotto does leave Mathilde by an untimely death. She is devastated and her grief at losing her husband and once again being left is uncomfortable reading as well as heartbreaking.
I thought the book’s structure worked really well with clueless Lotto in the first half of the book and revelation after revelation from Mathilde’s part of the book. Still, as much as Mathilde knew and kept secret, Lotto had secrets too, though certainly not of Mathilde’s caliber. I liked getting both sides of the story and seeing how each one created and navigated their marriage. It is a more complete picture than we would ever get in a real life marriage and I found the completeness satisfying. From the outside, one would think their marriage would never work, and some of their friends even took bets on how long it would be before they were divorced and some, even after the pair had been married for years, tried to sabotage the relationship. The ending with an elderly Mathilde reflecting back on her marriage made me a little teary.
Contributing to my enjoyment of this book was a personal connection. Mathilde and Lotto were married at the age of twenty-two ( I was twenty-three when Bookman and I got married) and they married a year before my own wedding. So in many ways it felt like I was reading the story of a couple I might have known, except of course I didn’t and wouldn’t have known them if they were real, they not being the sort I would generally be friends with. Nonetheless, there was a certain happy friction, a bit of voyeurism and self-satisfaction regarding my own good fortune that smoothed away some of the annoying bits about the book (like the bracketed narrative intrusions, what the heck were those about?).
I’d like to say wow, you should read this book, but it isn’t that sort of book. I think it is one that will appeal to many, be enjoyed by some, and really liked by a few. Which one of those you might be, you’ll have to decide for yourself.
I haven’t thought I would like this one, but you’ve changed my mind, a little.
I got married when I had just turned 22, and a month ago, one of my older cousins came up to me and said that she remembered everyone thought I was too young when I got married, but a few years ago it had dawned on her that she had gotten married at the exact same age! Since we’re all still married, it seems like we’ve proved the doubters wrong.
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Jeanne, it’s funny how time changes perspective. My husband’s niece just got married over the summer and she is 25 and I thought, goodness, she is so young! And then I remembered, oh I was 2 years younger than her when I got married. So I suppose we all prove it isn’t necessarily age that matters! 🙂
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Nice review, Stefanie. I started the book, set it aside, started again and then stopped. I’ll give it a try again in light of your comments. Perhaps the second part is worth plowing through the first.
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Thanks Richard! I enjoyed the first part but I know many who did not but the first part really sets up the second part. So if you try again, know the second part if full of fireworks but they will be more spectacular if you pay attention to the first part 🙂
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This is one of those books that, the more distance I have from it, the more I love it. The first part was good, but the second half (Mathilde’s story) was so blazingly fierce and vibrant that it bumped it into my favorite reads of 2015. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
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Laila, yes, fierce, I like that description of Mathilde’s part! Without the contrast to Lotto’s part though I don’t think it would have the same impact. From the two parts, a whole book, just like a marriage 🙂
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How can you resist a book that is described as ‘fierce and vibrant’?
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I really liked this one’s structure. The two sections were approached so differently that I was really happy that I’d paid attention through the whole first half of the book because I would have missed much of the impact otherwise. Groff’s novels do not always appeal to me, but this is one I’ll remember for a long time.
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Sam, I liked the structure too. And yes, paying attention in the first part of the book makes a huge difference because even though Lotto can’t is oblivious, the reader should certainly be left wondering and asking questions. I haven’t read any other of Groff’s novels. I might have to try another one just to see.
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I’m not sure if I want to read it or not. It certainly sounds intriguing, but some other reviews have made the characters sound rather unlikable, and I often have trouble sticking through a book if I don’t like any of the characters or they seem too unrealistic to me.
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Jeane, I didn’t find the characters unrealistic but they are definitely not especially likable. So yeah, if you need to like your main characters then you will probably want to skip this one.
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Our book club just read this book. You’re right – the first half of the book can be a chore to slog through, but worth the effort. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but I did like it, and I’m glad I read it. I loved seeing the two perspectives completely separate, rather than interspersed.
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rgemom, I didn’t find the first half a slog, but I can see how it could be. For all his charisma, Lotto isn’t that interesting of a person which is strange, but everyone believes in him and wants him to be a success and make his life easy so his lack of awareness makes sense. As Mathilde says late in the book, she had never met a more innocent person in her life. I agree, I very much liked the perspectives as separate rather than integrated.
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You’re right in that we just have to read it to find out. I’ve been wanting to read Lauren Groff for ages and actually spend half my review talking about my Lauren Groff non-reading journey as I’ve followed her writing career since Delicate Edible Birds.
I loved the structure and the idea of one being Fates and the other Furies and then finding out why, so I read it with a kind of suspended judgement, but got a little tired of it in the second story, I guess I just found Mathilde’s story a little too far-fetched and stopped caring about what they knew and didn’t know, they became too much of a creation, than a believable couple, but I’m still keen to read her earlier work, she’s definitely a very talented author.
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Claire, I’ve not rad Groff before but I am now a little curious about her other work so might have to try it sometime. The structure makes a huge contribution to how well the story works. It’s funny you found Mathilde’s story a little far-fetched, I felt that way a little about Lotto!
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I really want to read this book.
The characters sound so well crafted and drawn. It seems that the plot development of Lotto dying avoids a cliche. I think that many other writers would have fallen into the temptation of portraying a conventional breakup.
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Brian Joseph, yeah, the further I got along in the book the more I wondered how the heck Groff was going to pull off an ending because I could not see them growing old together. Lotto’s death does solve it and I have left out a couple key details about it so you might be a little surprised should you read the book 🙂
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I’ve resisted this book – I’m starting to enjoy that process of balancing the good & bad reviews with waiting for the hubbub to die down. I usually like books that are complicated and not beloved by everyone, but I think I will wait a year or more still. I appreciate this review.
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Care, I hear you! I usually wait for the hubbub to die down too but in this case my curiosity over all the mixed reviews got the best of me 🙂 Should you decide to read it, I hope you are among those who like it 🙂
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AND it is in the Tournament of Books so that is a big incentive. I’m crushing the goal to read as many as possible (which admittedly isn’t very many…)
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It will be interesting to see how it does in the Tournament! Good job on crushing your goal! Even if you read only a fraction of the books, that’s still pretty good 🙂
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Well, I wouldn’t come to this book with any pre-judgment because I’ve never heard of it. Given the names of the characters is there any suggestion of an Arthurian retelling going on here?
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Alex, heh, well that’s one way to not have any expectations! No Arthurian retelling, though Lancelot’s mother chose his name because she wanted all her men to be knights.
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Hi Stefanie, this has been in my TBR for so long. I like ‘He Said, She Said’ narratives, and books on marriage, relationships, and some drama. I was more intrigued when Stephen Hawking mentioned this as one of his favourites.
I loved your review. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. 🙂 Let me see if I can lay my hands on a copy soon.
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Deepika, I had no idea Stephen Hawking mentioned liking this one. Interesting. Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed the review. I will be really interested in what you think of it when you read it!
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Thanks for this Stefanie. I don’t imagine I’ll read it, but I know my daughter has it so I’ll tell her about your review when she tells me she’s finished it.
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whisperinggums, I hope your daughter likes the book!
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Haha! Not only did you review it but I commented. Mea culpa! And, as you now know, my daughter did read it – and probably felt a bit like you – i.e. she enjoyed it but didn’t rave (if I remember correctly but you’ve now learnt something about my memory!)
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Don’t feel bad. At the end of the year when I look back over my reading there are always at least one or two books that I have no recollection of having read!
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And you’re so young! I feel so much better now.
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I enjoyed your review Stefanie! For some reason this one wasn’t really on my radar much but now I think it would definitely be worth giving it a go.
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Thanks Iliana! If you read it I hope you fall among those who like it!
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What an excellent review Stefanie, and my feelings about the book are very similar to yours — some will really love the book, others won’t. It’s like that, for sure. And the second part, Mathilde’s part — that’s when it really took off for me. I got the book as a birthday present after hinting that I wanted it after I found out that this was President Obama’s favorite book of 2015. [I know, that’s a lot of “afters” there, huh?]
And you’re right, Groff sure does love to use those brackets a lot. [Like a real lot].
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Thanks Cip! The book does take off in Mathilde’s part but I don’t think it would have been so dramatic and interesting if Lotto’s part had been more exciting.
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