Groff is a brilliant storyteller, and Marie is a brilliant character – you want to be in her company forever. I really loved this book, and rate it highly amongst the books I’ve read this year. It’s got a little bit of everything that makes a great novel, and at a mere 272 pages it is not a weighty tome that puts you off. Her efforts see the abbey grow from a starving, pitiful existence to a powerful and beautiful place. She is an astute and clever woman with the nouse to prosper. She shows her fellow nuns how to survive and thrive. She fights against the patriarchal constraints and wins. Marie is a formidable character, and the story follows her from timid novice to abbess. Matrix promises love, mystery, and adventure. There is dexterity in the writing that gives it a neatness that you so rarely come across. I mentioned the purity of writing for Fates and Furies and Groff brings that same clean prose to this. The characters are well drawn and the setting is vivid. I was gripped from the first arrival of Marie. Medieval Britain seems a strange place in which to set this very feminist novel, but it works well. But as the story progresses, Marie’s fearlessness brings her to realise that the situation is not as dire as it first may seem – that she has the power to change things. She is cast into a hopeless situation and she knows it.

You first meet Marie as she arrives at the abbey, leaving behind everything she had ever known, and ever loved. So it was with great excitement that I entered the world of Matrix. I loved the intertwined tale of Lotto and Mathilde and the purity of the writing. I was a big fan of Fates and Furies when it came out six years ago. This dazzling work shows Marie fight for what she believes in, and wield power greater than she imagined. Matrix by Lauren Groff tells the story of Marie de France, an ungainly woman in medieval Britain, who is forced from courtly life to life at an abbey. Now, that same author is back, and with another banger. In 2015, a writer rocketed onto the scene with a sweeping novel about a married couple that spans decades.

Marie de france matrix