When I first heard
of this third novel by Lauren Groff, the hype surrounding its publication
unfurled a mighty crimson flag. Then my
wife gifted me a copy for our anniversary, so I was now required to read this
novel of a couple who meet in the final days before college graduation. They instantly fall in love, marry, and begin
a heated relationship with lots of twists and turns and blind alleys. Once I started reading Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, I could not turn away for more
than a few minutes. This is not a
typical relationship novel. Warning:
this is a novel for mature audiences, and spoiler alert: they do not
divorce.
Lancelot “Lotto” Satterwhite
was a tall, somewhat handsome man chased by every woman he met. He bedded most of them, but never for a
second time. Then he met Mathilde, also
tall and a lot more attractive than Lotto.
Groff describes her as, “never unkind, but she wore her passive
aggression like a second skin” (61).
Lotto acted in some college plays, and decided he wanted to be an
actor. Lotto’s father died when he was
young, leaving a rather substantial fortune to him, his sister, Rachel, and his
mother, Antoinette. When he refuses to
join the family business, she threatens to disinherit him, and does so when she
discovers the marriage to a woman she suspects is only after his money.
The novel is divided
into two parts, the first, “Fates,” has a narrator who tells the story of
Lotto, and the second, “Furies,” the narrator focuses on Mathilde. Groff also has a peculiar style – lots of
sentence fragments and one word thoughts.
Early on, she writes, “A unity, marriage, made of discrete parts. Lotto was loud and full of light; Mathilde,
quiet, watchful. Easy to believe that
his was the better half, the one the one that set the tone. It’s true that everything he’d lived so far
had steadily built toward Mathilde. That
if his life had not prepared him for the moment she walked in, there would have
been no them. // The drizzle
thickened to drops. They hurried across
the last stretch of beach” (6). After
this brief scene, Groff switches to a parenthetical, [Suspend them there, in
the mind’s eye: skinny, young, coming through dark toward warmth, flying over
the cold sand and stone. We will return
to them. For now, he’s the one we can’t
look away from. He is the shining one]
(6).
Some parentheticals reveal information of use much
further into the novel, In these two
sentences, we peer into Lotto’s future.
She writes, “Lotto’s formidable memory revealed itself when he was two
years old, and Antoinette was gratified. [Dark gift; it would make him easy in
all things, but lazy] (12). Sometimes
the narrator makes a self-correction.
“Good old [Robert] Frost, he thought.
The ones who said the world would end in ice were right. [Wrong. Fire] (141).
As an actor, Lotto loved Shakespeare, and lots of references to plays
are bandied about. For example, passages
from King Lear and one of my favorite
lines from Much Ado About Nothing, “Some
Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps” (60).
Lauren Groff’s
suspenseful story of a couple deeply in love and struggling to make their way
in the world, Fates and Furies will
keep you captive for a long afternoon or two.
Keep the kettle on for this one!
5 stars.
--Chiron, 5/16/16
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