Fates and furies

At first, I found this book to be melodramatic, written in an overly-literary style. The fractured timeline felt fumbled, forced, and confusing while the characters were poorly depicted and unlike-able, so I had no image of them in my brain and carved no space for them in my heart.

However, by the second act, it grew on me. It fit Mathilde's consciousness much better than Lotto's, and her story and her character are more interesting, anyways. The writing seemed to make more sense as I began to see the meta of it, the play within the play, the tragedy. I still found the bracketed asides to be a bit much, but will admit once I let go of the absurdity of it, I fell in deeply. And though on the whole a bit depressing, in the end I found it to be...touching, almost hopeful, and in its own way, rather beautiful.

Though a slow starter and definitely not for everyone, if you can get past the hammed-up writing and poor character writing, it's a decent read.

One sentence synopsis... The story of a marriage divided into two parts - ‘Fates', centered around good-hearted (yet narcissistic) playwright Lotto and ‘Furies', shifting to focus on the mysterious ‘ice queen' Mathilde.

Read it if you like... stories where the couple at the center have two radically disparate views of their relationship and life together, ie. Gone Girl. Unconventional writing - Groff's sentences are more like declarative statements and she occasionally interrupts the narrative with Greek chorus-like asides.

Dream casting... Will Poulter as Lotto. Anya Taylor-Joy as Mathilde.

Oh how I loved this book. At almost 400 pages, around page 150 I did find myself wondering what else could possibly happen since a lot of ground had been covered already but I am so glad I stayed with it. A complicated tale about the lies we tell to ourselves and to each other in the name of love and personal ambition. I was completely wrapped up in this love story and deeply moved by its thoughts on relationships, art, and redemption.

Fates and Furies is the story of the 24 year marriage of Lancelot “Lotto” Satterwhite, a failed actor turned celebrated playwright, and Mathilde Yoder, a woman with a blank past, no family or friends of her own to speak of. The first half of the novel tells the story that most of the world sees and that Lotto, a self absorbed man with an outsized need for encouragement and praise, accepts without question. It's the story that Lotto himself tells about their marriage. The second half of the novel reveals Mathilde's hidden past and how it has played a hidden part in the marriage that has been so admired by all their friends.

It's a good premise, but unfortunately I preferred the first half of the novel. I was aware that there was more to the story, but what I was reading felt true. The golden boy of college was failing to live up to his promise, the “perfect marriage” was under strain because of his depression and his wife's disappointment, and the burden of supporting the household falling solely on his wife's shoulders. When success finally comes, he is still needy, so although some of the burden is shifted, it's still Mathilde who is supporting the household. There is a lot of writing about Lotto and Mathilde's sex life, which some reviewers have thought excessive, but I read it as the (not 100% physical) attraction between them that makes it possible for the marriage to stay strong in spite of the strains.

The second part of the book just read like episodes of Dallas with hints of 50 Shades of Gray to me. Over the top unbelievable, lacking in emotional truth. I kept reading to get to the end, but I had essentially lost interest in the part of the book that was supposed to reveal deeper truths to me. Big disappointment.

This is a book I wouldn't have picked up from the subject matter alone, and but a couple of trusted sources recommended it, and man, were they right. On the surface, this is a story about a marriage, but it's also about how much or how little you can know the people around you in life. It's about perspective, and trauma, and the things that make us who we are, and it's done within the context of a modern Greek tragedy. The writing style, as I'm coming to expect from Lauren Groff, is superb enough to just make me angry at how good it is. Groff is good. Read her books.

I hate to write this review, because it's completely unexpected; after hearing all the positive buzz, I just knew I'd love this story. Man's pov and woman's pov. Mythological elements. Bloggers raving about how wonderful it is. NPR chose it as a book club pick.

Well, for whatever reason, I didn't love it. I forced myself to keep reading it. So sad to share this.

I've been puzzling over why F&F and I didn't become friends. I'm still not really sure, but I will say that I didn't like any of the characters, especially the two main characters. (I can't remember when I've read a book where so many people committed suicide and where I cared so little about their passings.) And I hated reading the text; the writing felt forced to me, like it had been heavily workshopped.

Just my thoughts, and you may feel completely different after your read. I certainly hope you do.

What to say, what to say. Definitely not for me. I didn't like the prose style (the one word sentences, for instance), didn't like the plot (supposedly some sort of Greek tragedy in modern times), didn't like any of the characters (a bunch of psychopaths). It was supposed to be two versions of the same marriage, told first by the husband then by the wife. But to do so, the first part (“fates”), told by the husband, felt like he was borderline cognitively impaired. Shallow and stupid. The second half, told by the wife (“furies”), felt to me as improbable and absurd. (And the dog named God didn't help it at all.)

Debating between 3 and 4 stars. The novel about a married couple - full of glamour and sex and intrigue and parties and family mysteries and dark pasts and deception and lies - is narrated in an interesting style, but it's main fault is that even though the characters seem fascinating, you never really start to like them, let alone care for them. If I hadn't listened to it on audiobook, I might not have made it all the way through, though I can say, the second half - narrated from the perspective of the wife - definitely invigorated my interest in the story a lot.

A novel split in half telling the story of a marriage. The first half follows the husband Lotto's rise from a failed actor to an acclaimed playwright. What should have been an eye rolling story of a white guy from affluent parents who graduates from a posh college to pursue a career in acting was sustained by Groff's writing and the close third person narration that would often interject with brief asides. The second half picks up the thread of the story and colours the past from the wife's perspective. Truly the Furies half of the novel, the plot picks up and veers awfully close to over the top.

Well, it took a long time to get through the initial chapters, but once Lotto makes his way out of boarding school, it picks up! I have to say that I was skeptical of the male perspective. If I want to read about a sexist male, I want to read it from a male author. That being said, I think it carried well. Groff writes beautifully. I hope marriage isn't this hard.

Early in Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies, a cat watches an outdoor dinner party, and we are privy to the cat's thoughts of incredulity as it watches the humans react in shock to the falling of fat raindrops, a rainstorm the cat knew was coming by the smell in the air, many minutes before.

There are moments when I wonder what our cat is thinking as she stares at us, sometimes with curiosity and sometimes with confusion, as we go about our daily lives. Cleo, our kitten, is young, still; her desire to know everything we are doing and be a part of all the activity comes from her age and her youthful vibrancy. The narrative in her head, however, is unknown to us: what is she thinking when we leave for the office in the morning, when we settle in bed for the night? What thoughts pass through her mind when we fold the laundry, turn on the stove, or even scoop her litter box?

We will never know Cleo's perspective on the world around her, because she will never be able to articulate them to us. All we can do, instead, is project our own impressions, build our own narrative of what her perspective may be—a narrative that is bound to be flawed, inaccurate. We will never know any better.

This, after all, is what Ms. Groff's novel is all about: unknowable perspectives. Fates and Furies tells us the story of Lotto, a young man who grows up to be a renown playwright, upon whom fortune smiles for seemingly no reason, and Mathilde, his wife, working in the background—unknown to Lotto—to guide that fortune, to create the luck that seemingly naturally finds Lotto at every corner.

It is a novel in two parts, containing two distinct perspectives, two stories of the same life that could not be more different, but it is more than that. Fates and Furies is a book that reminds us that the narratives we create, for ourselves and for others, are pocked with spots, gaps and holes we will never fill. Even those closest to us live lives that are utterly unknowable.

I will never know what Cleo, our kitten, is thinking behind those large, bright eyes, but this should not be troubling. After all, none of us will ever know what resides in the minds, the histories, the experiences, of those we love, no matter how much we share. Ms. Groff captures that reality beautifully, if not somewhat dispiritedly, in Fates and Furies. Lives are lived together, but the stories of our lives are our own.

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)