Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff’s third novel, told the story of a long marriage, first from the perspective of a complacent husband and then from the perspective of his less complacent wife. It was also chosen by Barack Obama as his best book of the year in 2015. Groff has said the attention this brought her made it difficult for her to write another novel, but there was another problem: “I wanted to get as far away from Trump’s America as possible.”
Her fourth and latest novel, Matrix, offers another perspective from the female experience but is far removed from the present day. The setting is a 12th-century convent, which Groff describes as a “flawed female utopia”. The real-life medieval poet Marie de France — about whom so much is unknown — is Groff’s heroine. What is known about Marie de France is that she wrote a translation of Aesop’s fables and, more importantly, a collection of Breton lais, or romances, which celebrated courtly love.
