Lauren Groff is a dazzling novelist who writes evocative prose, creates intimate and interesting characters and plants the reader firmly in place and time through detailed settings. Fates and Furies (Penguin Random House 2015) is an expansive saga of a novel that explores relationship dynamics, intimacy, ambition, friendship, love, betrayal, sacrifice, secrets and the sometimes tremulous, sometimes solid commitment of marriage.
The book allows the reader to examine a 24-year-long marriage truly from both sides, as the first half of the book speaks to us from the perspective of one partner and the second half from the other person, revealing many secrets and truths that were not apparent when reading from the point of view of only one person. It is clear that there are always three sides to a story: my perspective, your perspective, and the truth, which is somewhere in the middle.
Lotto and Mathilde fall hard and fast in love and marry at the tender age of 22 years. They are both tall, gracious, glorious, compelling, charismatic, daring, creative, quirky and unique. In this multi-layered and complicated story, we see the couple as their friends do – the perfect match, united in ambition and completely at home with only each other for sustenance. They are envied and almost hero-worshipped.
But with a complex weave of interconnecting threads and surprising revelations, especially in the second half of the book when we read the same story but from a different perspective, uncovering secrets and truths that were before hidden, Groff tangles the reader in a sticky web of loyalties, lies and omissions, as we discover that much of what we thought or assumed to be true is not, or was true only for some of the characters at some times.
As the couple grows older, and their lives and roles change, so too do their motivations, their dreams and their disappointments. Fates and Furies is an emotionally rich and satisfying novel about love, power, ambition, fate, anger, secrets, revenge, art and creativity, an encompassing saga about two sides of the same coin, in that when you flip that coin, you see an utterly different memory or timeline of events. The story contains several major twists that I didn’t see coming, which shows how it is possible for a story to be told in such a way that you believe you know the truth but that, merely by omission, there can be many hidden things below the surface, undiscovered until a different person tells the same story. Groff shows us the glory and wonder of theatre (and the heartache underneath the greasepaint); she shows us a certain darkness and danger that resides in full sight. A truly captivating story from a brilliant writer.