Matrix: A Novel

By Lauren Groff

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

WINNER OF THE 2022 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2021

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, The Financial Times, Good Housekeeping, Esquire, Vulture, Marie Claire, Vox, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and more!

“A relentless exhibition of Groff’s freakish talent. In just over 250 pages, she gives us a character study to rival Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell .” – USA Today

“An electric reimagining . . . feminist, sensual . . . unforgettable.” – O, The Oprah Magazine

“Thrilling and heartbreaking.” –Time Magazine

“[A] page-by-page pleasure as we soar with her.” –New York Times

One of our best American writers, and author of the highly anticipated THE VASTER WILDS,  Lauren Groff returns with this exhilarating and groundbreaking novel

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9780698405134

Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff nació y creció en Cooperstown (Nueva York) y en la actualidad vive en Gainesville (Florida). Ha publicado las novelas Los monstruos de Templeton, finalista del Orange Prize for New Writers en 2008, Arcadia (2012), mejor libro del año por varios medios, En manos de las furias (Lumen, 2016), seleccionada como la novela del año por numerosos medios y por Barack Obama, y Matrix (Lumen, 2022), considerada una de las mejores novelas del año por The Times, así como los libros de relatos Delicate Edible Birds (2009) y Florida (Lumen, 2019), finalista del National Book Award y uno de los mejores libros del año según The New Yorker y Time Magazine. Ha recibido el Paul Bowles Prize, el PEN/O. Henry Award y el Pushcart Prize, y ha sido finalista del National Book Critics Circle Award, el Kirkus Prize y el LA Times Book Prize. Sus relatos se han publicado en The New Yorker y en cinco antologías de los mejores relatos norteamericanos. En 2017 fue elegida por Granta como una de las mejores novelistas estadounidenses contemporáneas. La tierra más salvaje es su última novela y uno de los 35 mejores libros de 2024 según Elle.

Book preview

Cover for Matrix

Also by Lauren Groff

Florida

Fates and Furies

Arcadia

Delicate Edible Birds

The Monsters of Templeton

Book title, Matrix, Subtitle, A Novel, author, Lauren Groff, imprint, Riverhead Books

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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Copyright © 2021 by Lauren Groff

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Groff, Lauren, author.

Title: Matrix / Lauren Groff.

Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2021.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020052486 (print) | LCCN 2020052487 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594634499 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698405134 (ebook)

Classification: LCC PS3607.R6344 M38 2021 (print) | LCC PS3607.R6344 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052486

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052487

International edition ISBN: 9780593421192

Cover design: Grace Han

Cover images: (rays) Billnoll / Getty Images; (sky) Detail of painting by Philippe de Champaigne, c. 1646, oil on canvas / Photo © Bridgeman Images

Book design by Lucia Bernard, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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For all my sisters

Contents

Cover

Also by Lauren Groff

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Part Two

Part Three

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Acknowledgments

About the Author

ONE

1.

She rides out of the forest alone. Seventeen years old, in the cold March drizzle, Marie who comes from France.

It is 1158 and the world bears the weariness of late Lent. Soon it will be Easter, which arrives early this year. In the fields, the seeds uncurl in the dark cold soil, ready to punch into the freer air. She sees for the first time the abbey, pale and aloof on a rise in this damp valley, the clouds drawn up from the ocean and wrung against the hills in constant rainfall. Most of the year this place is emerald and sapphire, bursting under dampness, thick with sheep and chaffinches and newts, delicate mushrooms poking from the rich soil, but now in late winter, all is gray and full of shadows.

Her old warhorse glumly plods along and a merlin shivers in its wicker mew on the box mounted behind her.

The wind hushes. The trees cease stirring.

Marie feels that the whole countryside is watching her move through it.

She is tall, a giantess of a maiden, and her elbows and knees stick out, ungainly; the fine rain gathers until it runs in rivulets down her sealskin cloak and darkens her green headcloths to black. Her stark Angevin face holds no beauty, only canniness and passion yet unchecked. It is wet with rain, not tears. She has yet to cry for having been thrown to the dogs.

Two days earlier, Queen Eleanor had appeared in the doorway of Marie’s chamber, all bosom and golden hair and sable fur lining the blue robe and jewels dripping from ears and wrists and shining chapelet and perfume strong enough to knock a soul to the ground. Her intention was always to disarm by stunning. Her ladies stood behind her, hiding their smiles. Among these traitors was Marie’s own half sister, a bastardess sibling of the crown just like Marie, the sum of errant paternal lusts; but this simpering creature, having understood the uses of popularity in the court, had blanched and run from Marie’s attempts to befriend her. She would one day become a princess of the Welsh.

Marie curtsied clumsily, and Eleanor glided into the room, her nostrils twitching.

The queen said that she had news, oh what delightful news, what relief, she had just now received the papal dispensation, the poor horse had exploded its heart it had galloped so fast to bring it here this morning. That, due to her, the queen’s, own efforts over these months, this poor illegitimate Marie from nowhere in Le Maine had at last been made prioress of a royal abbey. Wasn’t that wonderful. Now at last they knew what to do with this odd half sister to the crown. Now they had a use for Marie at last.

The queen’s heavily lined eyes rested upon Marie for a moment, then moved to the high window that overlooked the gardens, where the shutters were thrust open so Marie could stand on her toes and watch people walking outside.

When Marie’s mouth could move, she said, thickly, that she was grateful to the queen for the radiance of her attention, but oh no she could not be a nun, she was unworthy, and besides she had no godly vocation whatsoever in any way, at all.

And it was true, the religion she was raised in had always seemed vaguely foolish to her, if rich with mystery and ceremony, for why should babies be born into sin, why should she pray to the invisible forces, why would god be a trinity, why should she, who felt her greatness hot in her blood, be considered lesser because the first woman was molded from a rib and ate a fruit and thus lost lazy Eden? It was senseless. Her faith had twisted very early in her childhood; it would slowly grow ever more bent into its geometry until it was its own angular, majestic thing.

But at seventeen, in this spare chamber at the court in Westminster, she could be no equal to the elegant and story-loving queen, who, though small in body, absorbed all light, all thought from Marie’s head, all breath from her lungs.

Eleanor simply looked at Marie and Marie had not felt so small since she’d last seen Le Maine, her six amazon aunts gone to death or marriage or convent, and her mother taking Marie’s hand and pressing it to the egg growing between her breasts, smiling hugely but with tears in her eyes, saying oh darling forgive me, I’m dying; and that great strong body so swiftly reduced to skeleton, acrid breath, then no breath at all, and Marie pressing all her vitality down into the ribs, all her prayers, but the heart stayed still. Twelve-year-old Marie’s bitter anguish at the high windy burial ground; and afterward the two years of loneliness because her mother insisted her death remain a secret, for the family wolves would strip the estate from Marie as soon as they heard, she being just a maiden bastardess formed of rape, not entitled to a thing; two lonely years of Marie wringing what coin she could from the land. Then the hooves on the far bridge and the flight up to Rouen then across the channel to her legitimate half-sibling’s royal court at Westminster, where Marie appalled everyone with her ravenousness, her rawness, her gauche bigboned body; where most privileges accorded her royal blood she lost due to the faults of her person.

Eleanor laughed at Marie’s refusal of her favor, mocked her. But but but. Did Marie truly think she would one day be married off? She, a rustic gallowsbird? Three heads too tall, with her great rough stomping about, with her terrible deep voice, her massive hands and her disputations and her sword practicing? What spouse would accept Marie, a creature absent of beauty or even the smallest of feminine arts? No, no, this was better, it had long ago been decided, back in the autumn, and her entire family agreed. Marie knew how to run a large estate, she could write in four languages, she could keep account books, she did all this so admirably after her mother died, even though still a tender little maiden, and what’s more she did it so well that she fooled the whole world into thinking for two years that she was her own dead mother. Which was, of course, to say that the abbey where Marie would be installed as prioress was so poor they happened just now to be starving to death, alas. They had fallen out of Eleanor’s pleasure some years earlier and had suffered grave poverty ever since. Also, there was a sickness still raging there. And the queen could not have the nuns of a royal abbey both starve to death and die of a horrible coughing sickness! That would reflect poorly on her.

Her cold eyes rimmed in black bored into Marie; Marie had no courage to look back. The queen told Marie to have faith, in time Marie would make a rather good nun. Anyone with eyes could see she had always been meant for holy virginity.

With this, the ladies were released into laughter. Marie wanted to squeeze their twittering beaks shut. Eleanor extended her hand, encrusted with rings. She said gently that Marie must learn to love her new life, that she must learn to make the best of it, for this was the desire of both god and the queen. She would go tomorrow with a royal escort and Eleanor’s own blessing.

Marie, not knowing what else to do, took the small white hand in her great rough ones and kissed it. Such things wrestled inside the girl. She wanted to take the soft flesh in her mouth and bite it to blood; she wanted to strike the hand from the wrist with her dagger and guard it as a relic in her bodice for eternity.

The queen swept out again. Marie went dizzy to the bed, to her servant Cecily, who kissed her head, her lips, her neck. Cecily was as blunt and loyal as a dog. She seethed and murmured calumny, saying that the queen was a dirty licentious southerner, that she had only been made queen the first time because of a single raging French sow, the second time because of a choking plate of English eels, that anyone could bed her for the price of a song, indeed just sing a romance and she’ll lift her skirts, if none of her children looked alike it was for a reason, that the devil sent malice into that royal head, oh Cecily had heard dark stories indeed.

And at last Marie roused from her shock and told the servant to hush, for the queen’s perfume lingered, a watchful ghost, in the room.

Then Cecily began to weep her fresh face ugly, all snot and blotches, and delivered the second blow. She told Marie that she, herself, would not be going with Marie to the abbey. That though she loved her mistress, she was too young and had far too much life to be lived to be buried alive forever with a bunch of dead-eyed nuns. Cecily was made for marriage, look at these hips, they could bear ten hearty babes, plus her knees were weak and she was not made for kneeling all day long in prayer. Up and down, up and down all day, like marmots. Yes, tomorrow morning, Cecily and Marie would be separated.

And Marie—who had been born into this friendship with Cecily, the daughter of the cook on her family’s estate in Le Maine, this rough person who had up until this moment been everything to Marie, mistress and sister and servant and pleasure and single loving soul in all of Angleterre—at last understood that she would be sent into her living death alone.

The servant wept, saying over and over, oh sweet Marie, oh her heart cleaved.

To which Marie, pulling herself away, said it must be the most unloyal form of cleaving.

Then she rose and stared out the open window at the garden in its cloak of fog, feeling the sun go down inside her. She put in her mouth the apricot pits from the fruit she’d stolen in the summer from the queen’s private trees, because in the autumn and winter she liked to suck the bitterness out of them. Over the landscape within her the chill of dusk blew, and all in shadow went grotesque with strangeness.

And she felt ebbing out of her the dazzling love that had filled those years in Eleanor’s court in Angleterre, that brushed even the difficulties and the loneliness in Marie with a fine and gleaming light. Her first day in the court in Westminster, she still had the salt of crossing on her lips when she sat at supper, overwhelmed; and at last the lutes and hautboys played and in the door was Eleanor, swollen with the end of pregnancy, belly and breasts, her right cheek enflamed, for a tooth had been pulled that day, and she moved with such tiny footsteps she seemed to glide like a swan, and she wore that same face that Marie had seen and loved in her dreams from the time she was small. The light in the room drew to a tiny pinprick illuminating only Eleanor. This was the moment that Marie was lost. That night she returned to Cecily in the bed already snoring, and woke the girl by moving urgently against her hand. Marie would have hunted for a grail, hidden her sex and ridden off to war and killed without sorrow, she would have borne cruelty with a bowed head, would have lived patiently among the lepers, she would have done any of these things if Eleanor had asked them of her. For it was out of Eleanor all good things flowed: music and laughter and courtly love; out of her beauty came beauty, for everyone knew beauty to be the external sign of god’s favor.

Even now, after being thrown away like rubbish, Marie considers, ashamed, riding toward the glum damp abbey, that she still would.

For she is stunned at the poverty of this place in the drizzle and cold, the buildings clenched pale atop the hill. It is true that all England is poorer than France, the cities smaller and darker and fuller of filth, the people scrawny and chilblained, but even for England this is pathetic, the derelict outbuildings, the falling fences, the garden smoldering with burn piles of last year’s weeds. Her horse plods along. The merlin cheeps, unhappy, plucking down from under its wings. Marie slowly nears the churchyard. All she had known of the place was that it had been founded by a royal sister made saint centuries before, whose fingerbone in death can now cure a boil; and that in the times of the Danish invasions the place had been sacked and looted, nuns raped, that in the marshlands all around there were still sometimes found skeletons with runes that had been tattooed so deep their tracery showed on the skulls. And when, at the inn where she had rested for the night, Marie had tentatively said the name of the abbey to the girl who had brought up her dinner, the girl had blanched and said something in English swift and incomprehensible, but the tone of her voice made it clear the people of the countryside found the abbey a dark and strange and piteous place, a place to inspire fear. And so Marie had dismissed her escort in town to arrive at this place of her living death alone.

Now under the yew she counts fourteen fresh black graves, shining beneath the drizzle. Later she will learn that buried there are the bodies of a dozen nuns and two child oblates taken only weeks before by a strange disease that made the flesh of the sufferers blue as they drowned in their own lungs; that some of the nuns are still sick, wheezing and giving rattling coughs in the night.

There is cut holly on the raw graves and the red berries are the only things that glow faintly in the mizzle, in the world at large, which has no more color in it.

All will be gray, she thinks, the rest of her life gray. Gray soul, gray sky, gray earth of March, grayish whitish abbey. Poor gray Marie. In the tall doors of the abbey now, two small gray nuns have emerged in their woolen habits.

As she nears, Marie sees that one of the nuns has a great soft ageless face, billowy, eyes gone white with the clouds in them. Marie has been told little of the abbey, but enough to know this woman is the abbess Emme, to whom an internal music has been given as solace for her blindness. She has heard the abbess is terrifically mad, if in a kindly way.

The other nun has the face of a medlarfruit, yellowish, sour, which the people of this strange wet country called openærs, or open arse, for the anus that god thought fit to press into it. This is Subprioress Goda. She had been selected in haste when the former prioress and subprioress died of the choking disease, as she was the last nun remaining who could write Latin in a hand legible. The queen’s proposed dowry was enough to keep the nuns alive for some time, Goda had written Eleanor begrudgingly, they may as well take the bastardess Marie. The faults in Goda’s letter were grave.

Marie stops her horse by the doorway and painfully slides off. She tries to move her legs, but they have ridden thirty hours over two days and are now boneless in her dread and terror. She slips in the muck of mud and horse shit and falls swift upon her face at the feet of the abbess. Emme looks down with her white eyes, vaguely seeing the form of her new prioress against the ground.

The abbess says with a voice more sung than spoken that the new prioress’s humility speaks wonders for her. Thanks be to the Virgin, Star of the Sea, who has sent such a modest and self-effacing royal creature to guide and heal the abbey after its sorrows, the coughing sickness, the hunger. The abbess smiles airily into nothing.

It is Goda who lifts Marie to her feet, muttering what a great clumsy lunk this girl is, a giantess too, and how peculiar-looking, though these clothes are quite fine, or were, now that she has gone and ruined them but maybe Ælfhild can clean them new again, someone must of course sell them, the sleeves alone would bring in a week of flour. So speaking, she gooses the girl into the hall inside and the abbess follows. Goda has the affronted air of someone who lurks in corners to hear herself spoken ill of so that she can hold tight a grievance to suckle.

There is no glass in the windows here, only wooden shutters covered by waxed fabric letting in thin bands of light, and the chill of the outside is somehow deepened in the great long room with the tiny fire of sticks alight in the hearth. The floor is bare of sweet rushes; it shines, cold clean stone. Heads peer at her from all doorways, then withdraw.

Moths, Marie thinks. She is perhaps delirious.

Goda rakes the mud to the floor with her nails and removes Marie’s filthy headcloths, pinching her on purpose with the pins. A servant brings a bowl of steaming water. The abbess kneels, and takes Marie’s muddied useless slippers and the stockings off her frozen feet, and washes them.

Marie feels needles and the deep burn as her feet return to life. It is only now under the gentle hands of the blind abbess that the shock is fading. This colorless place may be the afterlife, yet under the abbess’s hands Marie feels she is becoming human again.

In a low voice, she thanks the abbess for washing her feet, she does not deserve such kindness.

But Goda hisses that Marie is not special, that all visitors have their feet washed here, doesn’t she know anything, it is in the Rule.

The abbess orders Goda to leave and bids her to tell the kitcheners to bring the supper up to her rooms. Goda goes, muttering.

The abbess tells Marie not to mind the subprioress, because Goda had had her ambitions, but they were dashed with Marie’s advent. Goda is of course the daughter of the most noble English families, some Berkeley, some Swinton, some Meldred, and she cannot see how a mere bastard sister of a Norman upstart throne-thieving clan should supplant her in the hierarchy. But of course, Emme says, Eleanor demanded the place for Marie and what could Emme do faced with the will of the queen? Besides, Goda would fill the role terribly. She’s more fit to lead the animals she cares for than she is to lead her sisters, with whom she quarrels and whom she torments with her tongue-lashings. The abbess pats Marie’s feet dry with a soft once-white cloth.

She leads Marie barefoot against the cold stone up the dark stairs. The abbess’s rooms are tiny, parchments and books haphazard where Goda has piled them, but there are expensive windows filled with transparent horn that casts a waxy light into the room and makes it glow. Already the merlin sits warming itself on its stand near the small birch fire, a pretty blue flame snacking on the white bark. On a table is set some food, hard dark rye bread with a thin sheen of butter, wine blessedly unwatered and brought in better times from Burgundy, a soup with four slices of turnip in each bowl. The abbess tells Marie that they are in a famine, the nuns starve, alas, but suffering purifies the soul and makes these holy meek women even more holy in the eyes of god. And at least tonight Marie will eat.

She considers Marie, looking beyond her head with her cloudy eyes, and asks what Marie knows of a nun’s life in an abbey. Marie confesses she knows nothing at all. The food is tasteless, or she has eaten too quickly to taste it. She is still hungry, her stomach rumbles. The abbess hears the noise and smiles, and pushes her bread and butter over to Marie.

Well, the abbess says, surely Marie will learn quickly,

Reviews for Matrix

[electrascaife · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

At 17, Marie, a bastard princess in the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, is sent away by the queen to live a cloistered life as the prioress of a convent in England. At first it seems like a prison sentence, but throughout Marie’s life, as she works her way up to Abbess, she grows into her own power and a love for the nuns in her care.

Marie is one of those characters who will stay with me long after I’ve forgotten everything else about this novel. Strong and excellently complex, she’s not easy to love but it’s also impossible not to root for her. The writing, too, is fantastic.

[jtsolakos · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A story of Marie de France, a young woman exiled to a convent in a medieval abbey. The nuns are starving, and the convent is falling apart. But of course, Marie, a seventeen-year-old, comes to save the day. Too fantastic to believe? She's a superstar who achieves beyond what is realistic.
Even with all that, the story here is a bit dry. There is mysticism, God, and Catholicism. Plenty.
I kept waiting for a major event to alter the course of the storyline, but it never materialized. The plot is a flat trajectory with no peaks or valleys and virtually no significant suspense. A medieval mystery it is not.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the twelfth century women either married or became nuns; there was no other option open to them. Here we have a view into the lives of those who became nuns which perhaps was a better choice, especially for a woman with an independent streak.

Marie was born in France to a mother who was raped by an English soldier, a nobleman related to the royal house. Like her mother and her aunts she was tall and strapping and not pretty. After her mother died Marie went to live with Eleanor of Aquitaine in England but, with no marital prospects, Eleanor has sent her off to be a Prioress in a small convent of nuns. The convent is in "a stinking mud-befourled corner of Angleterre" and the nuns are virtually starving to death. Realizing that she is here to stay, Marie sets about improving the convent. First, she convinces the tenant farmers who haven't been paying rent to pay their arrears. The men have never seen a woman like Marie. As more women come to the convent, more money from their dowries helps improve the convent. Marie claims to have visions that show her what her next steps should be but, otherwise, she isn't what one would call religious. When the former Abbess dies, Marie is a shoo-in for the post which gives her limitless power. She manages to keep up with the news from the wider world, including what is happening to Eleanor with whom Marie has always been in love. When Eleanor is a prisoner, Marie wants to free her and bring her to the convent but she never manages to get to her current hiding spot before she is moved again. The nuns in the convent have all manner of skills so that nothing Marie wants to do from building a maze to erecting a cathedral is ever a problem. Marie lives for a long time and, to the end, exerts her power on all those who come in contact with her.

There was a real life Marie who was a poet well-known at the time and whose poems, called lais, still exist. She may have been Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury, illegitimate daughter of Geoffrey V of Anjou and half-sister to King Henry II of England. Henry married Eleanor of Aquitaine, another powerful medieval woman.

[postsbygina · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Coming from just having finished The Monsters of Templeton, this was immensely enjoyable. The heartbreak, longing, vengeance, and rise of Mary were equal parts riveting and frustrating. The fantasy-esque elements of Groff's storytelling has been a pleasure to read, and the scenes in Matrix are worthy of some visual art representation.

[technodiabla · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this in audiobook format.

This novel is about a bastard royal orphan girl, formerly a Crusading warrior, who is sent to become a nun and run the Abbey. She turns the place into a powerful entity of capable literate nun, but at a cost. It is an all too familiar story of ego, corrupting greed, and lust. Will it end in repentance or downfall, or both? I didn’t love the ending. I thought it needed to be more spectacular. I suppose the novel says that empire building is futile and that all human creations are temporary. Overall a good but not great book. I didn’t care for the narrator at all.

[carolfoisset · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[judithrs · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Matrix. Lauren Groff. 2021. This book was a National Book Award finalist and received rave reviews. I expected to like it since it took place during the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine and was about a convent. The author used Marie de France as her main character, but nothing is really know about Marie except that she was French but lived in England. She wrote the Lais of Marie de France and translated Aesop’s Fables from Middle English into Anglo-Norman French. Groff’s Marie is sent to England to become the abbess of a decrepit convent where the poor nuns are starving. Marie takes over and revitalizes the convent spiritually and economically. However Groff also adds to the false ideas that nuns are lesbians! Make no mistake, Groff’s prose is lyrical and the prose is beautiful. However, I quit reading the book when Marie decided she will celebrate mass when all the local priests are killed. That is so wrong, I couldn’t stand it.

[lady_lazarus · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

At the beginning I was sucked into the story, because of the beautiful writing that made the setting and the main character come to live. I really felt like I was stepping into another time and world. Unfortunately I lost the feeling when the story started to jump forward in time, fast-forwarding the accomplishments of Marie and the raise of the abbey from poverty to riches. I guess not describing the difficulties, the effort and the feelings of those involved in these changes made me get unattached from the story. Sadly, I lost the reality the nuns were living in. I made it to the end, but without real feelings for any of the characters and when finishing the story, I felt dull and empty.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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, 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.)

[dabble58 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[othemts · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This story inspired by the real-life Marie de France, details the life and accomplishments of the abbess of an abbey in 12th-century England.  At 17, the tall and not conventionally attractive Marie is sent by Eleanor of Aquitaine to the impoverished abbey.  Over the course of her life Marie raises the fortunes of the abbey as she rises in leadership.  She also begins to have visions and works to make the abbey independent and excludes men from the abbey lands.  In fact, all the speaking characters in this novel are women.  Eventually, Marie takes on the prerogatives of priesthood such as hearing confessions and celebrating the Eucharist.

I've seen criticism of the book that notes that Lauren Groff draws on her experience of the subjugation of women in modern evangelical Protestant churches, which is a very different ideology than Medieval Catholicism. I think that this book needs to be read as a metaphor for achieving women's liberation in a religious patriarchal society rather than straight-up historical fiction.

[mykl8s · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lauren Groff presents a readable, believable, fascinating story of life in 12th century England. It tells us a fictionalized life of Marie de France, a poet, who in this novel becomes the Matrix, or Mother, of a poor abby of nuns. She despairs at first of her fate, then becomes a force to be reckoned with.

The dust jacket says Matrix is "alive to the sacred and the profane," and that is certainly my experience of this extraordinary novel.

[skraft001 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Marie is expelled from the palace by the queen to be the prioress of a derelict abbey in 1158. She build it up to be the richest, most successful in England. All about the other sisters who played their role in this vision coming about. Superbly written.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this to be a bold and compelling reimagining of the life of Marie de France, a 12th-century poet and nun. While the author does not follow the exact historical record, she produces a powerful story about the life of a woman who struggles to find her place in a world that is both oppressive and liberating.

The novel begins with Marie being banished from the French court and sent to England to become the prioress of an abbey. Marie is a reluctant nun, but she soon finds herself drawn to the spiritual life and to the women who live with her at the abbey. As she learns to lead her community, Marie also begins to write again, and her poems soon become famous throughout England.

Groff's writing is lush and evocative, and she brings Marie to life with great empathy. Marie is a complex and conflicted character, and Groff does not shy away from her flaws. But she is also a woman of great strength and determination, and her story is one of triumph over adversity.

The author paints a vivid picture of 12th-century England, and her characters come to life on the page. . The novel explores themes of faith, power, and womanhood in a thought-provoking way. While some of the characters are underdeveloped, Marie is complex and fascinating at the center demonstrating strength, intelligence, and compassion. Overall, I enjoyed Matrix and would recommend it to fans of historical fiction, women's fiction, and beautifully written novels.

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This should have been right up my alley. A story of a woman who is exiled to a convent and works to make that convent a successful one, often against the tide of society. She has two things going for her, her size (she is often referred to as a giantess) and her connection to the royal family. She also has a lot of charisma and claimed to have visions which often suited her. I knew she wrote poems but they don't really feature heavily in the story.
I didn't really connect with the story or the characters and felt that time passed without any real feeling of time passing and I just knew the surface of the characters. Not a bad read but it didn't make me enthusiastic to find more by this author

[bibliothecarivs · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A loving portrait of a woman on fire. solum mihi scriptum erat (it was written only for me)

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Although this book is set in during the Middle Ages and features historical figures such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, to me it read more like legend than historical fiction, mainly because of the beautiful, mystical, romantic style in which it is written, which reminded me of King Arthur and other medieval legends. This is the story of a strong-willed, visionary abbess named Marie who constructs a feminist utopia at her abbey: a place where women's potential is unfettered by the constraints of the patriarchy. I would compare it to utopias like Herland and Always Coming Home. Although this is the first book I finished in 2023, it has the potential to become one of my favorite reads of the year.

[bornanalog · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the most believably positive and affirming books about women and women-centered communities that I have read. There's a wealth of historical detail and a plethora of new terminology for the day to day life of the religious community that sent me scurrying to a dictionary and other reference sources. Groff does have the occasional annoying habit of "futurecasting" the narrative (i.e. phrases like "Later in life she would come to learn. . ." ) but mostly this is in the early part of the book and she stops doing it after a while.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is good, one could say very good. But this isn't the book I thought I was going to read and I think there's another story in here that would be even more interesting, although far more difficult.
Marie is at the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England, when she is given the "good" news that she is going to be prioress of a small, struggling nunnery. At a stroke, her life seems to be stripped away from her, However Marie does not give in, and takes the Nunnery in hand. Just as she starts to find her feet, and takes on the task of turning round a struggling institution, we fast forward almost 30 years and come to Marie in post as Abbess and the remainder of the book is her period in charge, what she does, how she goes about transforming the institution into a powerhouse of prayer and actual power and influence.
Yes, it's good. Yes, it's a fascinating portrait of female power and agency, but we just skipped the really difficult bit - how do you save the sinking ship? How do you turn the things round so that by the end the descriptions of the Nunnery when Marie arrived are treated by the youngsters indulgently as stories - it could never have been that bad. It was and now it isn't, how you achieve that rescue, that;s the bit that takes drive, determination and imagination - all of which Marie clearly shows, but the author chose to focus on the easy bit - leading when things are going well. It's leading when things aren't gong well that the real test.
So yes, it's good, but it feels like the really good story got missed.

[jscape2000 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The plot is the story of a medieval giantess exiled to a convent, who becomes the abbess and through force of will, mystic visions, and surprising empathy and foresight, builds the abbey into a force of power and wealth and safe harbor for the women in her care. Marie's pride and power draws itself from visions of a version of the Blessed Virgin who is powerful, independent of men. And so the book unfurls in a world without men, but where men are a constant threat, looming just out of side.
And so what Matrix is about is female power - power over their bodies, power over their labor and its fruits, power over their systems of belief.

[jbd1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I always enjoy Groff's books, and this was no exception, even though it is markedly different from several of her others. Beautifully written and good for a slow, leisurely read so that the language can be savored.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a nice bit of historical fiction about the young illegitimate sister of Eleanor of Aquitaine, banished to an abbey. Over time, Marie becomes abbeys and a fierce leader/protector of the nuns. Politics, sensuality, visions of the Virgin Mary.....the book has it all. Medieval feminism.....interesting. A good read.

[lycomayflower · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[alanna1122 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am having a hard time figuring out how I felt about this book.

First of all Groff's talent is dazzling. This book is a complex never ending display of her talent. The amount of specialized language in here, used casually is incredible. I never ever could have read this book not on Kindle. I was pressing words for definitions almost on every page. There are SO many characters in this book. I had a really hard time keeping them all straight because their names were also challenging to remember. Sometimes I keep notes when I read books like this, I think it would have helped. I just wasn't in the mood to do the extra work this time.

Ultimately, the story kept me reading but I found it lacking in anything relatable. I feel like I wanted to find something to latch onto - but all the characters felt alien. It's an amazing crazy story - but I don't think I found it fulfilling in a complete way. I am in awe of Groff's abilities though and will read what comes next from here.

And even though I read it on Kindle - I think it has one of the most beautiful covers I have seen in a while!

[flourgirl49 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A book that I didn't think I was going to enjoy turned out to be a fascinating read.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Nuns having sex.

[rmarcin-630843 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book, set in the 12th century, is the story of Marie who is sent to an abbey at 17 to live out her life. Marie is in love with Eleanor the queen, and also has relationships with other women. Marie becomes prioress of the abbey and makes changes to the running of the place, to improve the food supplies and the wealth of the abbey. Marie claims to have visions of the Blessed Mother, and uses these visions to make additional changes to the abbey. Power goes to Marie's head.
I read this book for a literary fiction book club, and I am curious to hear what others thought of the book. I wasn't a big fan. Glad it was relatively short.

[muddyboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A very unique and wonderful look at a woman who becomes a nun and over time leads a powerful convent in Medieval France. Never with many prospects as a girl she is placed into a convent (She is reluctant.) which she will later lead adeptly to become a powerful economic juggarnaut during that time. Marie initiates and leads many building projects and the number of nuns expands greatly. The book is well written as Groff build the atmosphere quite effectively. You also learn much about convent life. It is easy to see why the novel got all the acclaim that it did.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[lauralkeet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.