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Fates and Furies

Lauren Groff (Goodreads Author)

3.57 · Rating details · 116,620 ratings · 13,776 reviews

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, ...more

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Hardcover, 390 pages

Published September 15th 2015 by Riverhead Books

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Jun 09, 2015 Emily rated it it was ok

Shelves: literary-fiction, arc

This book was a HUGE disappointment. I mean, holy purple prose, Batman! I really loved Lauren Groff’s writing in Arcadia - it was beautiful and touching, with gorgeous metaphors. But Fates and Furies is pretentious and overwritten. It tries so hard to be a literary masterpiece that you end up with asides like this one:

Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. She imagined her husband’s mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, although h

Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. She imagined her husband’s mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, although her stationery had stunk of baby powder and rose perfume. Sallie was starch, cedar. Her dead grandmother, sandalwood. Her uncle, Swiss cheese. People told her she smiled like garlic, like chalk, like nothing at all. Lotto, clean as camphor at his neck and belly, like electrified pennies at the armpit, like chlorine at the groin.

If you like convoluted metaphors and improbable life stories, you will enjoy this book. If you like reading descriptions of fictional avant-garde plays that add modernist touches to ancient stories (think Antigone transformed into “Go”), you will enjoy this book. But most importantly, if you like the grotesque, you will enjoy this book. The entire thing is a bizarre parody of what two people’s life stories could actually be like, and the fantastical, absurd elements are what really stand out.

The narrative constantly asks us: what is given up by each party in a relationship? What is worth giving up for a marriage, and how can two people stay together? There were a few poignant scenes where I really felt like Groff had captured this for Lotto and Mathilde, and I actually felt invested in their relationship:

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.

But even that fell apart for me given how ridiculous I found most of the book. Serious “plot” spoilers behind tags: I probably should have stopped reading this in the first hundred pages, when (view spoiler). Or when I realized that Chollie (god) was a character who was actually going to stick around for awhile. Or when I got to Mathilde’s half of the book, which is supposed to humanize her and round out the narrative, when really it just had me raising my eyebrows for a solid 200 pages.

The implication that married couples have secrets from each other is a sensible one; the idea that (view spoiler). And something about Mathilde’s self-sacrifice really rubbed me the wrong way. (view spoiler)

Ultimately I really hated these two people, hated the amount of dubious underage sex presented as normal, and came away thinking the entire novel just tries too way, way too hard. ...more

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Jan 12, 2016 Emily May rated it it was ok

Shelves: modern-lit, 2016

Between his skin and hers, there was the smallest of spaces, barely enough for air, for this slick of sweat now chilling. Even still, a third person, their marriage, had slid in.

This book is beautifully-written. I can't deny that and I won't try, which is why it gets an extra star. Fates and Furies is everyday poetry for those looking to turn the mundane into a meditation on the beauty of words and the power of metaphor. But when it comes to plot, characters and emotion, it leaves something ...more

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Oct 02, 2015 Vegantrav rated it did not like it

Two word review: pretentious garbage.

My apologies to the author, Lauren Groff, for being so harsh, but this novel is terrible.

Is Fates and Furies the worst novel I’ve read in 2015? We still have almost 3 full months remaining, but I have no doubt it will at least be in the top 3 worst reads of the year. I hated this novel. I only finished reading (hate-reading, actually) so I could have an outlet for my anger and disappointment: namely, writing a review of this novel.

Reading the description that ...more

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Apr 23, 2015 karen rated it really liked it

Shelves: free-from-work

Gone Girl with slightly nicer people...

but it's Gone Girl only at its most elemental. it's the story of the marriage of two beautiful people; a marriage whose sparkling perfection and longevity is the envy of all. but no one knows what happens in a marriage behind closed doors. sometimes, not even its participants.

this is the story of the moving parts that keep a marriage going; the sacrifices and the machinations under the smooth facade. it's about how much work it takes to make it look effort Gone Girl with slightly nicer people...

but it's Gone Girl only at its most elemental. it's the story of the marriage of two beautiful people; a marriage whose sparkling perfection and longevity is the envy of all. but no one knows what happens in a marriage behind closed doors. sometimes, not even its participants.

this is the story of the moving parts that keep a marriage going; the sacrifices and the machinations under the smooth facade. it's about how much work it takes to make it look effortless. it's about secrets.

and that's basically Gone Girl, right? the fact that a relationship is work, and if you let yourself slip into complacency, bad things can happen. it's nowhere near as misanthropic as Gone Girl, but strip away the sociopathy of dear amy, and you have a pretty compelling cautionary tale.

instead of amy we have mathilde - an enigmatic woman who captivates the charismatic lotto with her beauty and holds him with The dark whip at the center of her. How, so gently, she flicked it and kept him spinning. tall, privileged lady's man lotto proposes to mathilde upon their first meeting and loves her all his life. later, we will get her side of this first meeting and the calculation and misunderstanding at its center. it's a love story about two people who saw each other clearly enough to sustain twenty-four years of marriage, and what they didn't know couldn't hurt them. right?

it's hard not to say too much - lots of pressure being the very first review on here. all i knew going into it was that there were two parts, and the second part marks a huge shift in perspective that changes everything. it's not quite as simple as his-and-her narratives; the entire book is told in third-person perspectives, including parenthetical interjections from omniscient, possibly divine, commentators. but it's like a gigantic advent calendar of a book, where the more you read, the more is revealed, and the story is given more weight.

it's lauren groff, so there's a bit of magic to it, but only just subtle hints. and it's lauren groff, so there is exquisite writing: His wife carried their picnic basket to the edge of the lake under a willow so old it no longer wept, just sort of bore its fate with thickened equanimity.

it's lauren groff, so i loved it.

come to my blog! ...more

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Sep 24, 2015 Shelby *trains flying monkeys* rated it did not like it

Shelves: read-2015, dnf, netgalley, mean-ass-characters

Book-1
Shelby-0

I hate this book. There I said it. I keep trying to read it and then I look down and it says I still have soooo much time left in this book. I'm never going to finish.

The only character that I'm somewhat interested in is Chollie. The rest of them are just pretentious hipster assholes.

I'm a dnf'er. And I'm proud.

Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review

I'm probably totally missing out by not making myself finish this book. (I'm still not gonna do it) but my friend Leanne ...more

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May 07, 2015 Debbie rated it really liked it

Shelves: unreliable-narrators, couple-love-and-hate, best-reads-2012-through-2019

Amazingly brilliant. Language to die for. Fascinating characters. Clever format. But why did it take me three weeks to read?

This is a complex love story, full of secrets and regrets and passion. Part 1, Fates, is the husband’s story. Part 2, Furies, is the wife’s. It is absolutely brilliant.

Yeah, so why DID it take me so long to read this? Take a peek at my Complaint Board:

Complaint Board

Who ARE these guys in the twist? At the end, I got to a brilliant twist! I knew it was brilliant, but wait….. ...more

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Jul 01, 2015 Carmen rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: No One

Shelves: traditionally-published, fiction, 2018-book-lover-s-desk-calendar, she-says, published2015, american-author

No amount of beautiful language can gild this piece of shit.

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May 27, 2015 Joodith rated it did not like it

Shelves: did-not-finish

I'm approaching my 1/3rd rule with this book (if a book hasn't grabbed me by 1/3rd of the way in it's not worth continuing with it) and the urge to hurl it out the window is proving irresistible. It's not often I say I hate a book, but I absolutely hate this, and yes, I realise I'm sticking my neck out, and I'll more than likely be in the minority, but c'est la vie. I cannot join the herd and say I like something when I don't

This is a long, drawn out story about Lotto (short for Lancelot) and hi I'm approaching my 1/3rd rule with this book (if a book hasn't grabbed me by 1/3rd of the way in it's not worth continuing with it) and the urge to hurl it out the window is proving irresistible. It's not often I say I hate a book, but I absolutely hate this, and yes, I realise I'm sticking my neck out, and I'll more than likely be in the minority, but c'est la vie. I cannot join the herd and say I like something when I don't

This is a long, drawn out story about Lotto (short for Lancelot) and his marriage to Mathilde, The Perfect American Golden Couple. He calls his mother Muvva (!) - yergh. They are beautiful (of course - who wants to read about plain or ugly people?), clever, artistic and neurotic.

The prose in this book is so over the top, so flamboyant, obscure and ostentatious I just cannot stand it. This particular passage had me cringing:
"...She stretched her long arms over her head, and there were little nests of winter hair in the pits. She could hatch baby robins in those things. She looked at him, savoring her own knowing, his unknowing."

Often the "sentences" are just one word. Does this author think it's clever to write this way? Obviously. I don't know if this her usual style as I haven't read anything of hers - and this certainly does not encourage me to read her earlier books. It's another case of throwing every word you know, whether it actually makes sense or not - but never mind, it looks impressive.

I don't doubt that Ms Groff toiled long and hard over this, in an effort to write The Great American Novel, but to me it comes across as self-indulgent fiddle-faddle. Described as "a literary masterpiece that defies expectation." Yes indeed, it did defy my expectation, but not in the way the writer of that line meant. Who is it who decides what I, the reader will like; who is it who calls this a masterpiece? Those of us who don't agree are already at a disadvantage as we will be expected to explain and justify our reasons, whereas those who agree can sit back smugly.

I dislike this book intensely.
End of.

Amazon sent me a free copy speficicaly for review purposes. ...more

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May 02, 2015 Elyse Walters rated it really liked it

Shelves: netgalley

3.5 Stars
I have a mixed feelings toward this novel.
On the positive note... I was interested in the story about the married couple. I think this book is an excellent commentary on marriage.... what makes it work... and what makes it fail.

The author captures each character's individuality.... while at the same time invites us
to experience the intimacy of this marriage. I like much on this story-- yet.. I'm aware I was often 'detached'. This was not a book for me- that kept me turning pages wit 3.5 Stars
I have a mixed feelings toward this novel.
On the positive note... I was interested in the story about the married couple. I think this book is an excellent commentary on marriage.... what makes it work... and what makes it fail.

The author captures each character's individuality.... while at the same time invites us
to experience the intimacy of this marriage. I like much on this story-- yet.. I'm aware I was often 'detached'. This was not a book for me- that kept me turning pages with urgency. I enjoyed it reading this novel - but enjoyed my breaks away from it equally as much. I seemed to require reading breaks to recharge my own energy. Something about this story would
begin to drain me. ( it was just an observation I needed to respect) .. With breaks.. I often 'did'
return to my reading with a bright freshness.

I felt the beginning was very strong... when two people were walking up the beach-- she
in her green bikini, he tall --- ( both attractive), and then to find out they were married just that morning in secret. Yet, after a while, I felt there were too many mind-numbing details
that started to suck the energy from the story.
The writing frequently failed to keep my attention. I felt exhausted...( often re-reading sentences to bring myself back into focus).

Although I felt I got to know the characters pretty well. I didn't feel strong emotions. I was't 'feeling' any human frailty, or sadness,
or joy... just very neutral. Possibly if this novel wasn't as long I might have had a chance to directly feel more about each of the characters.. and the journey they went through.

This is a big- long- lush- slowly progressing story... one that in totality I appreciate -
and am glad I read it. It's also possible - that this story may grow on me as time goes on.
I'm aware that 'sometimes' books are enhanced for me once I begin engaging in book discussions. This might just be one of those books!

Thank you to the publisher, Netgalley, and the author, for allowing me to read this.
...more

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Apr 04, 2017 Amalia Gkavea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, american-literature, favorites

''There was an enormous crack in the world.''

What constitutes a successful union between two people who love each other? The ability to have the courage to mend the cracks that appear in an alarming speed as the years go by. Now, in the marriage of Lotto and Mathilde, the cracks are there from the beginning. Especially in Lotto and all they have to do is to ignore them and move on. But Groff's novel is completely devoid of cracks or any other fault for that matter. In fact, it is plain and s ''There was an enormous crack in the world.''

What constitutes a successful union between two people who love each other? The ability to have the courage to mend the cracks that appear in an alarming speed as the years go by. Now, in the marriage of Lotto and Mathilde, the cracks are there from the beginning. Especially in Lotto and all they have to do is to ignore them and move on. But Groff's novel is completely devoid of cracks or any other fault for that matter. In fact, it is plain and simple, one of the most interesting, daring and honest books I've ever had the pleasure to read.

I chose to read this novel, guided by the raving reviews of many beloved friends here, in Goodreads, and attracted by the claim that Groff had been inspired by Ancient Greek Tragedy. I was surprised to see that this is not just a very well-written love story, but also an immensely beautiful trip down the historical changes that New York and its society underwent from the early 90s all the way through our troubled present. To do so through the eyes of a squad of artists, in all their vanity and sensitivity, was satisfying and, frankly, hugely entertaining.

Groff touches upon so many subjects, one wouldn't know where to begin. The way I see it, the main themes are love and aspirations. We witness a relationship that starts in a rather unorthodox way. Lotto and Mathilde get married out of the blue and then, they have to learn how to live together, how to fight the daily problems, how to know each other and come to understand themselves in the process. Their relationship is presented in such a beautiful way that even a sworn enemy of marriage (such as myself) has to take a step back and contemplate for a while.

However, in my opinion, the notion that lies at the heart of the story is the way our aspirations influence our course in life once they are fulfilled or-worse- once we realise that they have become dreams of a past that is slowly fading away...Groff's writing took me back to the time when I was studying, when me and my friends thought that we would be able to change the world once we graduate from university. Instead, we slowly found out that the world actually changed us. Worries about our families, our work, our financial status, our relationships with our loved ones, all those things that make you feel you have entered the universe of the adults and their responsibilities.

Lotto, in particular, changes route and tries to fulfill his ambitions from a different starting point. And he succeeds. Mathilde? She remains the steady rock that binds him to the present and holds their life together. (view spoiler)

What can I say about Groff's writing? I'm going to resort to clichés, but I cannot help it. The language she uses is so powerful, so immediate, so creative. The style is unique, a third-person narration, with some slight but intricately woven hints of stream of consciousness. The dialogue is sharp, without unnecessary words, the pace leaves you breathless in a story that spans over twenty years, centered on two people. I enjoyed the New York colloquialisms and the fact that I could see and feel the changing city over the years, changes that were depicted in the characters and their interactions.

What is the most fascinating element in this novel? For me, it is the title. Fates and Furies... Why Fates? Why Furies? It had me wondering. The notion of Fate lies at the centre of the Greek tragedies, the three women who controlled and, eventually, cut the thread of all mortals' lives, the Moirai : Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis. The Furies, the Erinyes, were wild, winged female deities. Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone. They hunted and haunted the wrongdoers without mercy, for the rest of their lives. Orestes is the well-known example, punished for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra. So, Fates and Furies are our daily escorts, from the moment we are born until the day we depart from this world. They are the two sides of the same coin and Groff uses them in such a successful way that would make Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus proud...

I was reading this book while I was commuting to work and back. There were instances when it almost slipped off my hands out of sheer shock, others because of my anger caused by certain stupid decisions of the couple. I don't know how can anyone read this novel and feel absolutely nothing. I think it's impossible. One cannot remain indifferent in front of life and Lauren Groff takes life's notions, twists them and awakes every bit and every kind of emotion to the reader. It is a book that speaks with a voice of anger, despair and hope, and we feel compelled to listen...Carefully... ...more

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May 02, 2015 Esil rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley

Wow! I started reading Fates and Furies a few times and my interest quickly waned because the writing felt impenetrable. But this time I forced myself to read beyond the first few pages, and after sticking it out for a while I got completely sucked in -- by the writing, the concept, the atmosphere and the story. Groff's writing is unusual, both in style and in pacing. Her sentences feel messy and there's an arrhythmic staccato to the way in which the story moves forward. But once I fell in step Wow! I started reading Fates and Furies a few times and my interest quickly waned because the writing felt impenetrable. But this time I forced myself to read beyond the first few pages, and after sticking it out for a while I got completely sucked in -- by the writing, the concept, the atmosphere and the story. Groff's writing is unusual, both in style and in pacing. Her sentences feel messy and there's an arrhythmic staccato to the way in which the story moves forward. But once I fell in step with her beat, I didn't want to let go. In the first part, she had a brilliant lengthy section, in which the passage of time is marked by drifting from one gathering to another, in increments of approximately one year, the movement to another year marked by small changes in the dynamics between people and the eventual mention of a new occasion. And Groff brilliantly seamlessly shifts points of view, occasionally moving the story away from the two main characters and looking through the lens of the supporting cast -- even working in a brief lovely cat's view at one point. As I say, I loved the writing, but there's also a real richness to the story that kept me wanting to read. And shame on anyone who makes any comparison between this book and Gone Girl. The only commonality is that the stories are focused on marriages in which husbands and wives live in different realities. But Fates and Furies is an entirely different story -- it's not a mystery or a thriller -- it's about the the intense love and disparity between Lotto and Matilde throughout their twenty year plus marriage. The first part focuses on Lotto -- the big egotistical son of a wealthy Florida family -- and his perspective on life with Matilde -- his intense love, mixed in with self absorption and neediness. In the second half, we double back and get Matilde's point of view -- including a view into her impoverished dark childhood and adolescence, and her intense love for Lotto, mixed in with a fury and secretiveness fuelled by her past. For me, this made for a complex, layered, beautiful, emotional novel. It's clear from reviews that this book is not everyone's cup of tea and I suspect that for some the writing will be a turn off as it was for me initially, but -- wow again -- after getting over my initial hesitation, this was a really rich reading experience. I hadn't read anything else by Groff, but I've had Arcadia waiting on my shelf for a long time which I will definitely get to sometime soon. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy. ...more

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Jul 16, 2015 Jen rated it really liked it

The characters in this novel are despicable, spiteful and plain unlikeable. However, that being said, Fates & Furies was a phenomenal read.
This is the love story of Lotto and Mathilde. The Fates: The building up of a 20 year marriage. The Furies: The delayering of it. From perfection to perfectly flawed characters stripped of their stories living in their own play. The final act: A death reveals a truth. This is a backwards, upside down spiral of a story that will require the reader to piece it ...more

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Apr 21, 2015 Ron Charles rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015-favorites, novels-about-art

Even from her impossibly high starting point, Lauren Groff just keeps getting better and better. Her debut novel, “The Monsters of Templeton” (2008); her stirring story collection, “Delicate Edible Birds”; and my favorite book of 2012, “Arcadia ” — all demonstrated her exquisite style and tough, heart-breaking compassion. But her new novel, “Fates and Furies,” is a clear-the-ground triumph. Spanning decades, oceans and the whole economic scale from indigence to opulence, this novel holds within ...more

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May 24, 2016 Katie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: set-in-the-us, published-2015, husbands-wives

The miracle of this ravishing novel is that it takes such well-worn subjects as marriage and the career of a writer and makes them utterly fresh and compelling because of Groff’s dazzling prose and the ingeniously revisionist structure of the book.

The underlying premise here is that it’s much more difficult for a wife to sustain a happy marriage than it is for a husband. A generalisation of course. But a generalisation that was probably 90% true until this century and is probably still about 60 The miracle of this ravishing novel is that it takes such well-worn subjects as marriage and the career of a writer and makes them utterly fresh and compelling because of Groff’s dazzling prose and the ingeniously revisionist structure of the book.

The underlying premise here is that it’s much more difficult for a wife to sustain a happy marriage than it is for a husband. A generalisation of course. But a generalisation that was probably 90% true until this century and is probably still about 60 or 70% true – mainly because of the pressure on women to conform to society’s blueprint for female physical appearance which is far more exacting and crushing than anything men have to deal with. The novel is split into two perspectives of the same marriage – Lotto, the husband (the fates) and Mathilde, the wife (the furies). First we get Lotto’s perspective. Lotto immediately idealises Mathilde. He wants to see her as pure, a saint. And sustains this idea by showing little curiosity about her past which, of course, means her inner life. To Lotto she comes into being the day they meet, like Botticelli’s Venus emerging from her shell. Lotto is like a golden Labrador, bounding around good naturedly, living in the moment, trusting in the world to deliver up everything he needs. We get an early hint at just how strenuously Mathilde is supporting him in his wilfully myopic naivety when his ambitions to become an actor come to nothing and it is she who supports him by working.

Not surprisingly the novel’s thrill factor is cranked up when we get Mathilde’s perspective of the marriage. We soon learn just how much of Lotto’s success (he becomes a successful playwright) is down to ruthless and taxing Machiavellian scheming on the part of Mathilde. What Lotto thinks he earns through good fortune and the purity of his ambition we learn has often been the result of Mathilde pulling hidden strings in the dark. Mathilde, the moon to Lotto’s sun, the cat to Lotto’s dog, shelters her husband from the harsh realities of the world, like a mother with her child. “Boys belong to their mothers. Cord cut decades ago, but they’ll always share the warm, dark swim.”

Another thing Groff is doing is taking up the feminist argument that male genius often owes much to the unacknowledged contribution of the female at their side. Would Scott have been such an inspired author without Zelda? Groff makes a very literal case for this when she has Mathilde even fine tuning Lotto’s manuscripts without him realising, a somewhat implausible development it has to be said.

In fact, there are a fair few implausible details in Mathilde’s biography though surprisingly they rankle barely at all because of the transfiguring and masterfully controlled nature of Groff’s prose. It’s sometimes like Groff introduces high drama motifs – a private detective, a mysterious child death, dark hints at child abuse - simply to discover she doesn’t need them to construct a gripping plot. There’s even a stolen old master painting which appears and then quickly disappears as if Groff is winking mischievously at Donna Tart. The ending, which seeks to tie up the high drama motifs, is probably the least satisfying thing about this novel.

“Marriage is made of lies. Kind ones, mostly. Omissions. If you give voice to the things you think every day about your spouse, you’d crush them to paste. She never lied. Just never said.”
...more

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Jun 02, 2015 Sarah rated it liked it

Shelves: arc

The trouble I have with contemporary literary fiction is that I’m still primed to expect it to be more than it is. Like most newer books I’ve read lately, this is an engaging series of improbable events happening to gorgeous people, which elucidates no serious truths about the world around me. There’s nothing wrong with that and I enjoyed reading it, but I feel a lingering pressure to feel more.

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Sep 16, 2015 Cher rated it did not like it

Shelves: audiobook, contemporary, overrated

1.5 stars - I didn't like it.

This could be the first addition to a new genre, literary erotica(lite). If that makes you excited or more interested to read it, don't set yourself up for disappointment. The moral of the review is that if you write about sex for almost 300 pages (75% of the book) and still end up with a monotonous, tedious, unprovocative novel, then something has going disastrously wrong.

The author "tells" you that the couple have this epic, out of this world love for one another, 1.5 stars - I didn't like it.

This could be the first addition to a new genre, literary erotica(lite). If that makes you excited or more interested to read it, don't set yourself up for disappointment. The moral of the review is that if you write about sex for almost 300 pages (75% of the book) and still end up with a monotonous, tedious, unprovocative novel, then something has going disastrously wrong.

The author "tells" you that the couple have this epic, out of this world love for one another, but all you are "shown" is a superficial, childish, unhealthy relationship driven by lust, which could never be confused for love.

The first half, Fates, is told from the husband's point of view and was utterly painful to read. The husband is a caricature of every hero cliché and trope - handsome, rich, charming, intelligent, etc. This almost worthless part of the book was filled with a trashy log of his sexual conquests (don't get excited - the sex is all very uninspiring), with scattered catty gossip for added mental torture. There was absolutely no substance a reader could sink their teeth into - just pretentious fluffiness that aspired to be bold, but fell far short of the goal.

The second half, Furies, is told from the wife's point of view and is a marked improvement from the 1st half of the novel (but still only worthy of an average rating, at best). More salacious sex but at least there is some sort of depth to the story and the brief glimpses of the interesting character, Antoinette, create a spark of interest.

What a horrible disappointment from my most anticipated Fall release. It is simply a shallow read that I won't remember by the end of the month. And that huge "shocking" twist at the end of the book? Yawn. Not shocked. No cares to give.

I seriously doubt I will ever be tempted to pick up another book by this author; We're clearly not a fit for one another. If you'd like to also read a positive take on this one from one of my trusted reviewers (we can't see eye to eye on every thing or life would be boring!) then I recommend checking out Leanne's review .
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Favorite Quote: More than the highlights, the bright events, it was in the small and the daily where she’d found life.

First Sentence: A thick drizzle from the sky, like a curtain’s sudden sweeping.
...more

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Jul 01, 2015 Perry rated it it was amazing

Paean to Marriage, Mythology and Theatre

"Marriage is made of lies; kind ones, mostly. Omissions. If you give voice to the things you think every day about your spouse, you'd crush them to paste. She never lied, just never said."

The difficulty in reviewing this novel is avoiding disclosure of too much of the plot or structure. That, and the fact that I have found that many of my Goodreads friends in whom I place a good deal of trust on taste in books bungled the ball on this novel. I still have lots of love for 'em though. Hell, we all make mistakes.

In resplendent prose, Ms. Groff's story dissects a marriage: a community of 2... as 1 ("in they came integers, out they came squared"). We see the marriage and love's blossoming first from the husband's perspective, then from the wife's point of view. I heard Ms. Groff say in an interview that it took her nearly 5 years to write this book. It shows, splendidly. The novel is fabulous, at times stormy, and always ambitious, and has all the elements of the greats: passion, deception, betrayal, tragedy, redemption.

Lauren Groff probes the marriage of two vibrant and fully-developed characters, Lotto and Mathilde (and an assorted, colorful cast of their friends and family) by calling, with seeming ease, to the ancients in Greek tragedies, mythology, and of course the marvelously provided subtext of the Fates and the Furies.

Lotto is a failed actor turned playwright, and Mathilde is quite a scholar in fine arts. So naturally, Ms. Groff made her novel also a paean to the theater ("empty theaters are quieter than other empty places"), playwrights and Shakespearean tragedies, which she compliments with remarkable symbolism and short readings of rich pieces of original meta-plays, while always avoiding any trace of the affected, didactic or overly erudite.

I found this strikingly rewarding and quite original. As all the great ones do, this novel made me reflect heavily upon good and evil (and the gray gulf between). It also provoked deep contemplation of the different perspectives of each spouse and the transformation of love in marriage, from passionate to supportive and co-raising to comforting to, finally, "I cannot imagine a life I would or could have lived without you in it," at some point of which "marriage" really does mean that two meld into (but are never quite) one. ...more

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Oct 24, 2018 Violet wells rated it it was ok

Shelves: 21st-century, contemporary-american-fiction

The only award I'd bestow on this is the most unconvincing portrait of a literary genius ever written. Lancelot Satterwhite (his father's name is Gawain though we're missing Merlin) is the character in question. As his name would suggest he's a buffoonish knight in expensive armour. He makes two life-changing transformations - firstly, he changes from a womaniser into a model husband overnight; then he changes from a third rate actor into a first rate playwright literally overnight. The suspensi The only award I'd bestow on this is the most unconvincing portrait of a literary genius ever written. Lancelot Satterwhite (his father's name is Gawain though we're missing Merlin) is the character in question. As his name would suggest he's a buffoonish knight in expensive armour. He makes two life-changing transformations - firstly, he changes from a womaniser into a model husband overnight; then he changes from a third rate actor into a first rate playwright literally overnight. The suspension of disbelief in both cases is much more problematic than anything in Harry Potter. When Groff with brave foolhardiness provides us excerpts from his plays our suspicion that he's far from possessing the talent to write any kind of groundbreaking or commercially successful play are more than confirmed.

I wish I could say what this novel is about; however its motivational drive eluded me. It says on the jacket that the key to every marriage is not its truths but its secrets. That's an interesting idea but not one the novel explores with any subtlety. The secrets in this book are essentially melodramatic and even a little preposterous; they're also all one-sided which meant you had one overly complex character, the wife, and one overly simplistic, the husband. At times Groff flirts with leftfield feminist notions of the role a wife plays in the creative output of her husband, like the idea Zelda was the real genius in the Fitzgerald partnership. You can imagine a male backlash to these notions and in a hundred years men claiming Leonard was the true genius in the Woolf marriage or Middleton Murray was the real driving force behind Katherine Mansfield's gift. They'd be no less absurd. At other times it posits the idea that men are either loveable simpletons or sinister predators, that you get what you see (Groff seems to equate fat with pernicious intent), and it's left to women to alchemise all the complexity and inner life of a relationship. There's probably a great novel to be had in juxtaposing the divergent perspectives of the man and the woman in a single marriage. The key would be to make both points of view equally as valid and credible. A massive problem for me here was neither male nor female were credible - Lancelot never once seemed to possess an inner life; Mathilde on the other hand was ALL inner life. It's also a novel brimming with allusions to classical literature as if it boasts layer upon layer of profundity. Even the title would imply we're dealing with a book with lofty pretensions. But all the allusions seemed vapid to me. I was rarely convinced Groff had command of her material in this novel. Did she, for example, intend her two central characters to come across as overgrown children? The first half isn't the perspective of the husband and the second half the perspective of the wife as some have suggested. There are clumsy deviations and overlappings in the narrative voice in both sections. Neither was I convinced she has a gift for comedy. I often found myself wishing for more gravitas. However there was the sense Groff will write a good novel. Perhaps she just needs to grow up a bit? I'm sure it's a better novel than I'm making it out to be but sometimes a book irritates us and we become a bit irrational and exaggerated in our dislike. It was the whimsical tone with its posturing prose that irritated me here.

On a final note I struggle to understand why Obama loved this so much, especially because not one of the outrageously spoilt and privileged characters would have voted for him. ...more

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Nov 26, 2017 Maxwell rated it really liked it

Shelves: owned

“It occurred to her then that life was conical in shape, the past broadening beyond the sharp point of the lived moment. The more life you had, the more the base expanded, so that the wounds and treasons that were nearly imperceptible when they happened stretched like tiny dots on a balloon slowly blown up. A speck on the slender child grows into a gross deformity in the adult, inescapable, ragged at the edges.”

I think that quote sums this book up pretty well. It's a book about perspective—and p ...more

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Mar 04, 2016 Helene Jeppesen rated it it was amazing

This book was amazing! It kind of reminded me of "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn because it deals with the fact that there are two sides to every story, but at the same time it was completely different from that one.
"Fates and Furies" is a story told from two perspectives: Lotto's and Mathilde's who are secretly married when they are 22. We then follow them in their marriage as they grow up, and we get to read about all their insecurities and their strength in each other.
I think this book was bri ...more

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May 02, 2015 Julie Christine rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2015, usa-contemporary, best-of-2015

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 silence, and Mathilde had only ever life to Lotto in what she never said."

As a literary construct, Fates and Furies is a mannered edifice of spun sugar, gorgeous and brittle. As a story, it splits open the melon of marriage to show the overripe flesh inside and a core that is on the verge of rotting. I can smell it, like Lotto can smell the garbage Mathilde hasn't taken out in his absence, because the garbage is his chore. And the odor is proof she can't manage without him. Or so he believes. But what is the truth behind that whiff of decay?

Oh, the truth. Truth, you wily coyote. The mutability of truth in marriage—this is the pungent, nearly rotten core of Fates and Furies. The novel exposes what really lies inside a long-term relationship, once the smooth, silky skin of its public face is broken and the truth spills out.

Fates is the story of Lancelot "Lotto" Satterwhite, a charismatic actor-turned-playwright whose narcissism imbues his character with an unearned optimism. He is malleable in the hands of the women who direct his life, from his mother, to his sister, to his wife, Mathilde. After plunging every girl he encounters in democratic but detached delight, he falls irretrievably in love with tall, needle-sharp, wise Mathilde in the weeks before they graduate from Vassar. Fates recounts their storybook passion, his fidelity, and quite boringly, the content of his many successful stage plays. It is a meringue of a marriage, where poverty and success are equally delicious, and Lotto's star rises in platinum brilliance until . . .

(Until... Much has been made of the plot twist that I didn't find all that twisty. This reader never got terribly caught up in caring about the characters, so I wasn't so much gutted or surprised as I was amused. It's not that I don't want to "spoil" things for you, but there are plenty of reviews which reveal the details of the plot's change-up and this just won't be one of them)

... Until the book's second section, Furies , which lets us in on Mathilde's side of the story. Her biography is worthy of a Frances Hodgson Burnett sepia-toned tragedy and is nearly ridiculous in its epic disastrousness. Probably why I love it so. Mathilde is a wonderful anti-heroine. Gaspingly self-serving and cruel, yet somehow we root for her, as she contracts to skin and bone in harrowing grief.

There are moments of jarring authorial heavy-handedness. Too-clever literary devices—the omniscient narrator parentheticals were tiresome, the outlining of the plays tedious— but Groff's writing is so sublime, so ridiculously fine, I hardly cared.

I love this novel for all the ways it is ambitious, melodramatic, vertiginous, erudite, wordy, cynical, lush, kaleidoscopic, implausible, abstract, and tedious. This is an author writing from a place of confidence, giving zero fucks while she executes an inward pike from the high dive—not a perfect dive, mind you, but one that leaves your jaw hanging nonetheless. ...more

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Nov 13, 2015 Brown Girl Reading rated it it was ok · review of another edition

The only reason why I gave this book 2 stars was because of the beautiful writing. However the stereotypical main characters, pretentious sentences that don't really mean anything, dry storyline, and forgettable characters almost left me in a reading slump. I was really disappointed with this one because I expected so much more from it (National Book Award and Pulitzer nominations) but once again I was a victim of book hype. ...more

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Apr 29, 2016 Melanie rated it it was amazing

"Even from her impossibly high starting point, Lauren Groff just keeps getting better and better. Her debut novel, “The Monsters of Templeton” (2008); her stirring story collection, “Delicate Edible Birds” (2010); and my favorite book of 2012, “Arcadia ” — all demonstrated her exquisite style and tough, heartbreaking compassion. But her new novel, “Fates and Furies,” is a clear-the-ground triumph. Spanning decades, oceans and the whole economic scale from indigence to opulence, this novel holds "Even from her impossibly high starting point, Lauren Groff just keeps getting better and better. Her debut novel, “The Monsters of Templeton” (2008); her stirring story collection, “Delicate Edible Birds” (2010); and my favorite book of 2012, “Arcadia ” — all demonstrated her exquisite style and tough, heartbreaking compassion. But her new novel, “Fates and Furies,” is a clear-the-ground triumph. Spanning decades, oceans and the whole economic scale from indigence to opulence, this novel holds within its grasp the story of one extraordinary marriage. Not yet 40, Groff nonetheless captures the complicated ways love blesses, transforms and, yes, deceives us over many years. (...) Swelling with a contrapuntal symphony of passions, “Fates and Furies” is that daring novel that seems to reach too high — and then somehow, miraculously, exceeds its own ambitions."
Ron Charles in the Washington Post

Hallelujah.

It's hard to pin down exactly what Lauren Groff managed to do here but one can only sit back and think hard on what just happened to you once you finish reading this truly stunning novel. Similarly to my experiences with "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", "American Pastoral", "The Corrections", "The Interestings", "Station Eleven" and "The Woman Upstairs", I had goose bumps after reading the first pages of "Fates and Furies" and wanted to live in that creation forever.

The depth and levels of understanding at work in our lives, the subterranean currents running beneath our feet, the invisible lines of randomness and chance crisscrossing in our midst, the past informing the present, the inner life feeding the one we present to others, the ocean that sometimes lies between the two, the elemental, character-defining events of our youth perpetually tinting our actions. This book contains multitudes.

The themes are big and bold, yet rooted in the finite and delicate details of the everyday. The intimate is brought to life with such precision and uniqueness. With cruelty and tenderness. With cunning and smartness. The construction is daring and ambitious and wild. It will leave you breathless and grateful. Be ready for Part 2 and its astonishing "Furies"...

Mathilde, oh Mathilde, I will never forget you.

And what can one say about the writing? Prose that sings and soars and melts like butter on your tongue. Visceral and poetic and visually evocative. An absolute dream.

What a f***ing trip. (Please excuse my language) ...more

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Sep 16, 2015 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: national-book-award-nominees, reading-envy-podcast, read2015

I am not ashamed to say that this book surprised me. I had read one previous novel by Groff and felt rather ambivalent about it (Arcadia) but she is one friend's favorite author and then the book was a finalist for the National Book Award - the fates would have been furious had I not given it a try. Har har.

I am also a bit of a sucker for a well written novel about marriage, a real look at marriage, the hard parts, the hidden parts, the mistakes, the journey. This is about that for sure. Everyt ...more

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Jul 16, 2015 Carol rated it really liked it

My sincere thanks to Netgalley and Riverhead Books for providing this e-galley due to be published September 15, 2015.

3.5 rounded up to 4 as I am of a positive nature...

The Hook - The promise of an exhilarating read about relationships and marriage.

The Line The publisher requests that this e-galley not be quoted. The line I really liked has to do with committing the embodiment of someone to perpetuity.

The Sinker – Do not expect a quick read where everything is as it seems. Expect to take a bi ...more

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Oct 25, 2018 Fabian rated it really liked it

The tale is so beautifully crafted, with the climax occurring right dab in the middle of it--both an innovation and a feat. Getting both parts of the marriage is a privilege we are afforded as readers. And what a magnificent telling of it! L. Groff is a master of prose, of feeling. We see these demigods suffer & wade through a magnificent wave of contemporary life. I guess I may sense a disconnect between these American beauties and myself. Both of our lovers have homes that shun them, and this ...more

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Oct 14, 2015 LeAnne: GeezerMom rated it it was ok

Shelves: litmus-test

For readers who love the theatre, have studied Greek classics and mythologies, who know which luminaries won Tony Awards this year, who titillate at hints of illicit acts of homosexuality by straights, or know the works of Shakespeare intimately, go ahead and follow the accolades. Read. Enjoy. I respect you literary art lovers but am not one of you.

This double set of stories, one apiece about the man and wife, going from childhood through their mid 40s, seemingly took forever for me to get throu For readers who love the theatre, have studied Greek classics and mythologies, who know which luminaries won Tony Awards this year, who titillate at hints of illicit acts of homosexuality by straights, or know the works of Shakespeare intimately, go ahead and follow the accolades. Read. Enjoy. I respect you literary art lovers but am not one of you.

This double set of stories, one apiece about the man and wife, going from childhood through their mid 40s, seemingly took forever for me to get through, despite it being lush and full of depth. The author can turn a phrase, certainly.

Despite the lovely description of the husband Lotto's childhood in Florida (which utterly enthralled me), my interest in the first section of the book faltered terribly when he hit the age of about 30. Seriously, this book covers 40 years of his life and then of hers - without some interesting twists, this thing was a ship going under water fast for me, and having to read the multiple plays-within-the-novel made me wish for a faster drowning. Reading the opera-within-the-novel?? Omg. Pass the poison. And I actually love opera! Unfortunately, because of my general disinterest in stage plays, Greek mythology (many character names are twists on the gods' names), and the (IMO) shallowness of the characters, I got to know the husband but never really cared about him.

The wife's half of the book was (thank the gods) slightly more interesting, but the "big" surprises left me shrugging. Meh. Who cares?

I did not like Lotto or Mathilde and found them ridiculously self absorbed - with the exception of their interest in having sex with each other. I really wish I had this book on Kindle so I could do a search on various phrases relating to intercourse to see how often it came up. Pun intended. Maybe I should rewrite this review with even more sophomoric sexual innuendos in every paragraph to give you a feel for the book - they were everywhere. An example is that Lotto the husband and playwright wrote the lyrics to an opera based on Antigone (who in myths was sentenced to eternal life) but wants to call it Anti-Gonad. Sexual references all over the place. If you're 19 or uber lusty, you may like it.

Seriously, I must have bumped into sex at least once every 45 minutes for the 35 hours it took me to listen to this. Sex became so boring and so commonplace that it was akin to a tired waitress emptying the coffee filter, rinsing, and refilling it at an all night truck stop. The bottomless cup, yet always weak.

All in all, I just kept seeing the author trying too hard behind her scenes and her (to me) shallow characters. I believe every character, minor or not, should be built like a pearl from the inside out. Hers felt hollow and many one dimensional. The author projected herself as very affected or pretentious to me, not just by writing herself in as a side character in the story, but with the whole idea of human scent.

Im sorry, but do you honestly know anybody who smells of persimmons? Have you ever even smelled a persimmon? Can you smell lavender or stone dust or ice or roses or cinnamon or the ocean in the skin of someone - no, not their shampoo or deodorant or lotion or perfume, but their very being? Do you seriously think everybody has an identifiable odor? Such pretentiousness. But I guess that is theatre, dahling. Not my cup of tea. Writing:very good. My enjoyment:minimal
3 stars ...more

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Apr 29, 2015 Leanne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-heart-hurts, read-in-2015, favourites, greek-mythology, love-gone-bad, top-2015

Wonderful, absorbing, epic story of two people, their tragic life stories, and their marriage. You have to ease into it a little - I found the plot immediately engaging but the prose is a bit flowery and impenetrable at times. As you read on, though, you sink into the story and the lush description and almost dreamy tone fits perfectly.

I love stories of different perspectives, and Lauren Groff pulls this writing device off almost flawlessly - Lotto's story comes first ("Fates") and is followed b ...more

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May 10, 2015 Malia rated it it was ok

Shelves: literary-fiction

With this book, I just wanted to be like everyone else and love it, unfortunately I'm going to have to admit to being that sore thumb and stick out of the crowd of raves. I'm afraid this book just wasn't for me at all. Though Groff undeniably possesses a gift for language, I wonder whether she is not, perhaps better suited to poetry. Sometimes her flowery prose felt over-the-top, as though she was trying to fit in some poetic turn of phrase which didn't fit the scene, and it felt jarring. In any With this book, I just wanted to be like everyone else and love it, unfortunately I'm going to have to admit to being that sore thumb and stick out of the crowd of raves. I'm afraid this book just wasn't for me at all. Though Groff undeniably possesses a gift for language, I wonder whether she is not, perhaps better suited to poetry. Sometimes her flowery prose felt over-the-top, as though she was trying to fit in some poetic turn of phrase which didn't fit the scene, and it felt jarring. In any case, her elegant prose is why I am giving the book an extra star. Sadly, that is where the positives end for me.
I absolutely loathed the characters! And if you've read some of my other reviews, you'll know that I can forgive a weak plot if I can connect with the characters, but cannot enjoy a weak plot and unlikable, cold characters. It is strange that I should view them as such, since the book is meant as a portrait of their inner lives and marriage, but to me they never warmed and certainly never felt very real, not in their thoughts or their behavior. I cannot say which portion I disliked more, Lotto's or Mathilde's narration, because both were almost equally blah for me. I felt a perpetual detachment to them, which made the story really drag on. Having read so much good about this book, I really hoped there would be something wonderful just coming up, so I kept reading, but it never came.
The title and description of the book also made me think that there would be enjoyable links to classical literature and mythology, but the links that were there felt forced and a frankly too showy for my taste. Fates and Furies did not read like a Greek tragedy (certainly not a comedy either) and in the end I just wanted the Furies to sweep in and put and end to the tedium.
I hate to write a negative review, but the fact that Obama said this was his favorite book of the year should dampen the sting of any less than glowing review.

Find more reviews and bookish fun at http://www.princessandpen.com ...more

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Oct 07, 2015 reading is my hustle rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction-marriage-domestic

Lauren Groff? Girl can write. She is a bit of a show-off even. I like that. Also, I am exhausted. This is quite the ride.

Let's see. Since there has been SO much buzz surrounding this one and many good reviews I think I will just throw some thoughts out there. Stylistically this is gorgeous. The writing is abrupt. Sometimes it is confusing. Parts of the story are a bit pat. Doesn't matter. Quibbles.

I think I will explain it to patrons as a thinking person's Gone Girl. I do not mean that in an a ...more

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About Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff

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Lauren Groff was born in Cooperstown, N.Y. and grew up one block from the Baseball Hall of Fame. She graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Hobart, and Five Points as well as in the anthologies Best Amer ...more

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“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.” — 66 likes

“Paradox of marriage: you can never know someone entirely; you do know someone entirely.” — 64 likes

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