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A review by snaillydia
Matrix by Lauren Groff
3.0
A young woman named Marie has been deemed too unwomanly for court, thus she is ordered to become the prioress of a starving abbey. Matrix follows her from the day she arrives, angry at this rejection and in denial that the rest of her days will be spent as a nun.
I expected the anger to be ever present in this novel, but it fades. Marie's attitude shifts as she spends years, decades, in the abbey. And we do follow her for the span of decades, the events of the book are told in vignettes of abbey life.
I had a hard time in the beginning. We spent a lot of time establishing Marie's past right off the bat, where I think it would have been preferable to sprinkle those memories in between the abbey vignettes. Once Marie really started getting the hang of this nun thing, that's when I started enjoying the novel more. The characters and conflicts Groff chooses to focus on are interesting and fun. However, that also got old eventually. Nuns live, nuns work, nuns die.
The best work here is the character study of Marie, how she builds her influence and why. We get some beautiful prose too, sapphic longing and joy. But I don't think it did any of these things fantastically enough to be memorable.
I expected the anger to be ever present in this novel, but it fades. Marie's attitude shifts as she spends years, decades, in the abbey. And we do follow her for the span of decades, the events of the book are told in vignettes of abbey life.
I had a hard time in the beginning. We spent a lot of time establishing Marie's past right off the bat, where I think it would have been preferable to sprinkle those memories in between the abbey vignettes. Once Marie really started getting the hang of this nun thing, that's when I started enjoying the novel more. The characters and conflicts Groff chooses to focus on are interesting and fun. However, that also got old eventually. Nuns live, nuns work, nuns die.
The best work here is the character study of Marie, how she builds her influence and why. We get some beautiful prose too, sapphic longing and joy. But I don't think it did any of these things fantastically enough to be memorable.