Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Matrix by Lauren Groff

25 reviews

_moomin's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Matrix imagines the life of Marie de France, a noblewoman, abbess and woman of letters who lived and wrote from the 1100s to 1200s in Brittany and England. She's best known as the author of a collection of short chivalric romances, adapted from Breton folktales. Though her works survive, very little is known about her life.
I read her Lais for a class last spring and was excited to read a fictionalized story of her life, because her vibrant personality and sharp wit come through in her writing, and she was clearly a super interesting person! I enjoyed reading Matrix--the book is rich in historical detail and the prose is magical. The book explores radical protofeminist utopianism that is perfectly suited to the era (see Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies, or Marie's own defenses of women in her Lais). The characters flesh out the world, though Marie and a distant but everpresent Eleanor of Aquitaine are the most fully fleshed out.
The book did feel disconnected from the Marie of the Lais. This writing project of Marie's plays only a passing part in the story, which is focused her role as abbess at a struggling English convent. While the character of Marie in the book is strong and interesting, I think the book might have been stronger if it used the historical Marie as inspiration but didn't make her the main character. 
There were also moments when the theology or understanding of medieval religious life didn't sit quite right to me. I'm not an expert on medieval Catholicism, but I read in another review that the author was raised evangelical, which made some of that disconnect or anachronism make more sense.
Overall, Matrix is a good read and a thoughtful, vibrant, and deeply human portrait of Marie de France.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

thewritebooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional hopeful informative reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
This read like a quiet masterpiece.

Immediately after finishing this, having cried through the last 15 pages, all I could think about was the beautiful way that all of the themes came together at the end to tell a story of life and loss. We travelled through the role of medieval women in the church, female solidarity and sisterhood, sapphic love and desire, the cycles of the seasons and the catholic calendar, power and greed and the sin of creation, followed by the moral weighting of these sins against these women's souls.

The prose was never dramatic, and by avoiding direct speech throughout, the author adds to the feeling of being another witness to the years marching onwards at the Abbey. The messages in this book were very close to my heart and I would be interested in going back with tabs to track and analyse those themes a bit more, having the hindsight now to see how well they were laid out.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

eliya's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark informative mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book was a challenge for me. 
It took me 15h 21m technically, with the Libby app open whether or not I was actually reading. 

I’ve never read a historical fiction book for me, and the beginning was a little slow. Once it picked up, the pace ebbed and flowed, and, I began to appreciate how beautifully it is written. So many passages that I want to keep and remember forever, the word choice and the poetic cadence of Lauren’s Groff’s writing is best described by a friend of mine as “delicious.” absolutely. 

I love women and I’m so glad I read this book even though this book is way smarter than I will ever be. Gonna go finish weeping now. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

adymae11's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

edamamebean's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Probably the best book I’ll read all year. It’s small in scale—never leaving the abbey—but it’s proportions are mythic. The writing is so beautiful that I had to stop and underline often. Lauren Groff is not only a good writer, she’s also a wise one. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

deebee223's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

writersrelief's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 
Following the success of her novel FATES AND FURIES, author Lauren Groff turns her attention in a surprising but not unwelcome direction. MATRIX, set in the twelfth century, follows the imagined life of the very real Marie de France. There’s not much known about Marie beyond the lais (poems) she wrote, so Groff has taken what bits we do know and constructed the rest to suit the book’s narrative. 
 
In MATRIX, Marie is an intelligent, bold, and physically unappealing seventeen-year-old. Unsuitable for any men of the court and in love with Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie is sent off by Eleanor to a remote royal abbey. The abbey is in a horrific state when Marie arrives and the nuns are barely surviving, but Marie sets out to change all that. 
 
Though her dedication to the sisters and to the abbey seemingly lies more in her drive to succeed than it does to serve God, Marie’s influence and power grow steadily. The abbey flourishes under her direction and from the nuns’ hard work. But Marie doesn’t stop there: Aided by “holy” visions and her determination to build a place where women can thrive, she begins to manipulate the world of men to her advantage. Marie utilizes the way she and the sisters are overlooked as a way to outmaneuver the men who stand above them. Marie’s plans for a “female utopia” grow ever grander, culminating in the construction of a forest labyrinth  around the abbey. Creating this labyrinth requires both hard labor and feats of impressive engineering not often accomplished by women in stories of these times. 
 
But is Marie’s success due to her dedication to keeping herself and the women around her safe, or is it due to her drive for power and control? Or is it both, and is that okay? Marie herself understands the divide, noting on her deathbed that, “greatness was not the same as goodness.” But in the world she and her nuns are born into—one ruled entirely by men—does it even matter how it is that these women find their own power, strength, and safety? That’s one of the many questions you might find yourself considering when you finish this book. 
 
As always, Groff’s prose is inventive, vivid, and gorgeous. The scenes of Marie’s visions are particularly impressive, and though the pacing feels uneven in spots, Groff’s ability to make her words feel alive on the page is ever-present. Marie is both a simple and a complex character: She overcomes nearly every obstacle without much trouble, but her motives and inner desires—as well as how these interact with her actions and the world around her—are complex. And with a distinct absence of any notable male characters, it’s hard to deny that reading this book feels like a brief, welcomed moment away from the male-dominated world that surrounds us even today. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

bronzeageholly's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional funny inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

lindsayerin's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

thecriticalreader's review against another edition

Go to review page

mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Review:
Admittedly, it took me nearly 200 pages to really start to get used to Matrix by Lauren Groff and its poetic, fluid, somewhat stream-of-consciousness writing style as well as its unique storyline that often produces more questions than answers. Even then, it was not until the end of the story that I fully appreciated the book for what it is. At the heart of the story is the character of Marie, an admirable but flawed nun whose ambition leads her to transform a starving, poor abbey into a magnificent, self-sustaining wealthy fortress. Marie’s character arc is wonderfully executed, and I appreciated the large cast of supporting characters as well.
 
My favorite part of Matrix, however, is its thematic exploration of religion, feminism, ambition, power, sapphic love, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. This is the sort of book that I could read many times over and glean new meaning each time; it is the type of book that begs to be analyzed in a literature class. Groff trusts in the intelligence of her readers and never oversimplifies or hits the reader over the head in order to make her point.
 
 
 
The Run-Down: 
You will probably like Matrix if:
·      You go into the book with an open mind
·      You are someone who is interested in themes of religion and queerness
·      You enjoy poetic writing styles
 
You might not like Matrix if:
·      You dislike flowery writing and fluid plot structure
·      You prefer exciting plots and clear explanations for events
 
A Similar Book: 
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladsone. Similarities between these books include:
·      Beautiful, lyrical, intelligent prose
·      Friend/enemy relationship between two strong women from different worlds
·      Themes of feminism, queerness and humanity’s relation to the natural world

Expand filter menu Content Warnings