Fates and Furies
A Novel
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4.2 • 1.2K Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A FINALIST FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
NPR MORNING EDITION BOOK CLUB PICK
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, TIME, THE SEATTLE TIMES, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, SLATE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, KIRKUS, AND MANY MORE
“Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers – with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout.” —The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
“Elaborate, sensual...a writer whose books are too exotic and unusual to be missed."—The New York Times
“Fates and Furies is a clear-the-ground triumph.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
From the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, and Florida, an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception.
Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation.
Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.
At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The writing in this dazzling novel will take your breath away. Married couple Mathilde and Lotto have the kind of life others envy—they’re beautiful, successful, wealthy, and madly in love. But perfection is an illusion. American author Lauren Groff (who wrote the enchanting Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia) finds inventive ways to burrow beneath the surface of Mathilde and Lotto’s story, revealing the troubling obstacles and secrets paving their paths.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a swirling miasma of language, plot, and Greek mythology, Groff (Arcadia) weaves a fierce and gripping tale of true love gone asunder. Told in two interwoven parts, the fable-like story of Lancelot (Lotto) and Mathilde's 24-year marriage unfolds, first from Lotto's perspective, then Mathilde's. "Fates," the first part, takes readers through Lotto's mopey years as a failed actor living in "glamorous poverty" in New York City's Greenwich Village, his overnight success as a playwright, his struggles with aging, his perpetually hungry ego, his estrangement from his millionaire mother, and his gleeful infatuation with and dependency on his pale, bewitching wife. Meanwhile, Mathilde's all-consuming adoration for her husband doesn't completely jive with the dark secrets she's hiding from him. Of course, there's always the sex. Groff's prose is variously dewy, defiant, salacious, and bleak a hurricane of words thrown together on every page. Yet so much of the power in this book lies in what's unspoken Lotto's bottomless sorrow and self-pity flanked by Mathilde's white-hot rage and, later, her thirst for revenge. There are moments when the writing feels self-indulgent, but, for the most part, it's an intoxicating elixir. Perhaps Groff herself says it best: "It was less a story than a great creature surfacing from the deep; it was more sudden audible wave than narrative."
Customer Reviews
Fates and Furies
What a terrific story!
Confusing
I really enjoyed the story line but felt like it never dug deep enough into any of the many sub story lines to get hooked. The prose is confusing. I wanted to like this book but struggled to connect with it and what really took place between Matilde, Lotto, Chollie and their past lives.
Gorgeous
This was one of the better reading experiences I’ve had. Nothing trite, formulaic or boring about it. The story told from perspectives of different people and times lent depth and beauty I didn’t expect. So sad when it ended.