A Dreamy Marriage Turns To Rage In ‘Fates And Furies’

Fates and Furies

by Lauren Groff

Hardcover, 390 pages | purchase

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“ Oh, yes, you ‘d return to your wife on hands and knees, crawl the distance of the Eastern Seaboard to feel her fingers once more in your hair. You ‘re despicable of her [ Yes. [ No. ] ] tied as you think of escape, you ‘re transfixed by the lovers, would n’t dare move for fear of making them flap like birds into the blister flip. ” And that, my friends, is Lauren Groff. Some of the last lines of Part 1 of her new novel, Fates And Furies. The best lines ? Nope. They are all ( or about all ) best lines. The book is a master class in best lines ; a glow, rare exemplar of that most grim and barbarous writer ‘s advice : All you have to do is write the best sentence you ‘ve ever written. then 10,000 more of the best. then find a way to string them together into the fib of something. Which is what Groff has done here. And if you do want to learn how to be a great writer, you could do worse than skipping out on that M.F.A. course of study or costly writer ‘s retreat, dropping 28 bucks ( $ 17-something on Amazon ! ) on this ledger, studying the hell out of it, and then spending all that money you good saved on gin cocktails and hats. It ‘s that dear. That beautiful. occasionally, that stunning .

Fates And Furies is the fib of a marriage. not of every marriage ( as so many of today ‘s novels-about-marriage attack to be ), but fair about the one — Lotto and Mathilde. It is a divide narrative, first Lotto ‘s translation of events ( Fates ), then Mathilde ‘s ( Furies ). It goes that direction because Lotto is the simple of the two, the distinguished, the more dramatic — the one whom fortune ( and the fortune of being born into wealth and privilege ) had graced. It goes that means because Mathilde operates behind the scenes and in the shadows, keeps most of the secrets, and all of the worst ones. Because it is Lotto ‘s version of Mathilde we must see first in order to understand Mathilde ‘s version of Lotto. The half-and-half narration could ‘ve failed terribly if Groff had n’t had it in her to do the heavily thing — which is not to precisely tell two versions of the same story, but two completely different stories that happen to contain some of the lapp details. But she did. A long marriage is n’t just about two people remembering things differently, she says with her choices. It ‘s about two people remembering entirely different things, inhabiting entirely different worlds.

Lotto ( short-change for Lancelot, natch ) remembers asking Mathilde to marry him ( the first words he always says to her ) and her saying yes and then some dates and stuff happen, and then them having sex for the first base time .

Mathilde recalls saying no to his marriage proposal, waking in full clothed beside him the next morning, and the way he slept with his fists balled beneath his chin. Lotto remembers their first apartment, a basement in Manhattan, and how felicitous they were there. Mathilde remembers the secret lengths she went to in ordering to pay the bills, all the rice and beans they ate for dinner, the frightful sacrifices, hard choices, misery. Lotto remembers being an actor. Mathilde remembers him failing. The voice that tells Lotto ‘s half of the fib is dreamy. Mathilde ‘s is crude, barbarous. A greek chorus chimes in now and then in snarky, bracketed asides, which work beautifully within the architectural construction of Groff ‘s articulation. The marriage ( which comes fast upon that disputed proposal ) follows a predictable path through the standard-issue minefield of all marriages, but the wonder is in seeing it in full, from two unlike sides. In seeing Lotto rise and fall and ascend again, and in seeing what Mathilde did quietly, by and large furtively, to engineer these changes in luck. In feeling how absolutely convert Lotto ‘s translation of events is properly up until Mathilde takes the stage. early on, Lotto ‘s drama teacher asks the class what the remainder is between drollery and tragedy. “ Solemnity versus wit, ” person says. “ Gravity versus lightsomeness. ” Wrong, says the teacher. There is no deviation. “ It ‘s a question of perspective. … It merely depends on how you frame what you ‘re seeing. ”

By the end of Fates And Furies, we have seen both sides, possibly even all sides of Lotto and Mathilde. We ‘ve seen the world and the woman behind the valet, digest witness to awful truths brought forth for cattiness ‘s sake and watched a colored turn to angered vengeance when Mathilde ( suddenly, but not at all uncharacteristically ) goes fully Lady MacBeth and scorches the identical worldly concern. We know their secrets. We know their fears. We know what they did behind closed doors ( and ones good slenderly ajar ). And so far still we are left with one lingering question. Do we close the book believe in the honor and genius of the doomed son, or with nothing but a cold and lingering ferocity ? Jason Sheehan is an ex-chef, a former restaurant critic and the stream food editor program of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and radiate guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest bible .