Breathtakingly beautifully written….. WONDERFUL as can be……Lauren Groff is STAND OUT TALENTED!!! Truly one of our most gifted authors of our day!!!I was worried before I started this— afraid I wouldn’t connect with the time period, plot, or history. I had ‘nothing’ to worry about — NOTHING!! I felt complete trust in the palm of Lauren’s hands … transported to another time another day another world….Incredibly engrossing- and powerful. I just loved it - love Lauren Groff more after this novel tha...

The spicy nun novel we deserve, this is a fun and imaginative take on history through a fantastical and feminist story of mystical visions, poetry and power struggles. A real treat, review to come.

This is pretty exceptional. A novel about a 12th century abbey and the nun who leads it into prosperity after being banished there is not a story I would have thought I might enjoy. But I did. This is gloriously written. The level of detail of 12th century life is remarkable. Marie, the heart of this novel, is fierce and formidable. The research that made this novel possible is impressive. The ending falters as if it didn’t quite know where to end. There were a couple of things that were hard to...

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked this up. Ratings have been all over the place. But I adored Fates and Furies so I was drawn to this author.It’s the 12 century. Seventeen year old Marie has been ousted out of the Queen’s court in France, and is sent to be the Prioress of a monastery. She’s not marriageable because of her height and looks. (!) Through determination and strong will, She manages to bring the Abbey out of its poverty and into a wealthy place. Building her own empire.The fa...

Eleanor of Aquitaine was a force of nature, dominating her era through personality and political machinations, leading revolts even against her husband and children. Told from the perspective of Marie de France, who is in love with Eleanor, Matrix is set in a 12th century abbey peopled with nuns with a 21st century sensibility. Fixating on the anachronisms is beside the point because this is more fan fiction than historical novel. Adjoa Andoh, who read the audio book, highlights the fanfic natur...

I was in the middle of reading a much-acclaimed new novel recently and the experience was dragging because I wasn't gripped by it so I decided to put it aside and pick up Lauren Groff's new novel “Matrix” instead. French lesbian nuns in the 12th century! This is what I need! That's not to say that it's appealing just for the subject matter. The story delves into the mind and heart of its heroine Marie de France in such a compelling and complex way that I'm still pondering the larger meaning of t...

[S]he could hold her daughters aloof from the corrupting world. There would be no authority but Marie's authority in this place. And they could stay on this piece of earth where the place has always stood but her daughters would be removed, enclosed, safe. They would be self-sufficient, entire unto themselves. An island of women.Historical fiction is not my usual jam, and I dare say books about a 12th century abbey are hardly anyone’s jam. But Lauren Groff is an extraordinary writer, and after

Here’s the thing: gorgeous writing, but I wasn’t invested at all. I really loved the first chapter; convinced I was in store for a new classic. Unfortunately, my interest waned shortly afterward. There were flashes of pure genius, but my biggest problem is that there were no high stakes whatsoever. Every bit of conflict was resolved almost as quickly as it started. Years passed in a matter of pages (sometimes on the same page). And Marie is written in almost a saintly/superhero kind of way: she

I am a longtime fan of author Lauren Groff, with my favorite being “Fates and Furies”. Her new novel, “Matrix”, is about a 12th century nun which I read with trepidation. I could not imagine a story in which I’d be interested, involving a French nun who is also known as a poet and a woman with “visions” from the Virgin Mary. Given my heretical opinion of those who indulged in holy visions, I always assume those visions occurred from severe mental illness or from a physical reason such as dehydra...

There are several definitions of "matrix," but the one central to this novel is an old one, meaning a kind of mother, from matr- and -trix, and once I figured that out I stopped asking the question I'd had since I first heard that it was a book about 12th century nuns where I could not for the life of me figure out what a mathematical word like this had to do in the title. Anyway, if you are a weirdo like me, I have solved your problem. This is a novel about 12th century nuns, the prose holds ou...

SisterhoodI may not understand Groff’s intention with this book. Or perhaps I do, in which case I don’t like it. It is historical fiction only in the broadest sense that a woman called Marie Abbess of Shaftesbury did exist. Anything else is mostly legend. And Groff’s casual conflation of two historical characters on the basis of a shared given first name (Marie of France, a contemporary but very different woman than Marie d'Anjou) seems a bit out of line even in fiction. It seems to me the book

i put off reviewing this too long, because the book is so much better than my reviewing abilities, and now it's pub day and i'm the worst. the book's still great, though, and it's out today. go get it.

I need to say that my 2-star rating is entirely subjective (what else would it be?) and that other readers liked this far more than me. I would venture to add that the less one knows of Marie de France and her writings, the easier it might be to fall into this book. In fact, the hook of 'Marie de France' is precisely that, a hook on which to hang a story that could have been about any modern fantasy of a powerful medieval woman's life - it doesn't really touch base with what we learn about the r...

If “Matrix” were written by anyone else, it would be a hard sell. But Lauren Groff is one of the most beloved and critically acclaimed fiction writers in the country. And now that we’ve endured almost two years of quarantine and social distancing, her new novel about a 12th-century nunnery feels downright timely.Still, a medieval abbess is a challenging heroine — living, as she does, a millennium away from us, suspended in that dim historical period long after the Romans but centuries before Sha...

Longlisted for the National Book Awards 2021 ‘For it is a deep and human truth that most souls upon the earth are not at ease unless they find themselves safe in the hands of a force far greater than themselves.’ My advanced reader copy of Matrix came with the all-caps tagline: MEET THE INDOMITABLE MARIE DE FRANCE. However, there is but a mere soupçon of Marie de France in this well-wrought tale, so to any stans out there: this might be a letdown. Not much is known about Marie, other than she

Well written but the cycles of (i) curveball challenge to an prioress/abbess establishing oneself, (ii) solution, (iii) some lesbian sex and (iv) observation on monastic life really bored me after a while, even though this is not a sizeable bookFor it is a deep and human truth that most souls upon the earth are not at ease unless they find themselves safe in the hands of a force far greater than themselves.Matrix in a sense feels like an inverse to Wolf Hall, where we have a well known story but...

In her inimitable style Groff tells of the life of Marie of France or Mary of Shaftesbury (depending on the resource consulted) about whom little is known. A bastard of royal blood, Marie was booted from royal court and sent to live out her days first as a prioress and then as an abbess at a starving, poverty stricken, disease-ridden abbey of no regard. Her days revolve around temperamental and unpredictable nuns, very hard and painstaking work, and many hours of prayer and meditation. And, this...

Wonderfully written and researched story of an ambitious accidental nun consolidating power in the 12th century. The book thrums with visions and Groff's excellent writing, and I flew through it. I occasionally (this isn't a critique, exactly, just an observation) found that the book was winking a bit too much at the contemporary reader, in its imaginings of the future and usage of contemporary political conversation. The easy comparison is perhaps Wolf Hall, which drew me in more, but there's a...

35% DNFThis reads like a recap of a novel rather than a novel.

I'm not so sure what Groff was trying to accomplish here. I'm pretty sure I was the very first person to get this much-anticipated new release at my library; I had requested it long ago when I read the blurb and said to myself, woo buddy, this one's for me. It's a fictionalized account of Marie de France, the 12th century poet and writer and possible nun (scholars aren't so sure, might've been another Marie), and her life and work as the abbess of an English convent.Both the writing and the stor...