Bookworms Bookclub discussion

Our next read will be one that I saw on a lot of Best of 2021 Lists and I've been eager to read since.

Here's a little info...

"Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease... Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be bulwark enough?

Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff’s new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world."

I think this is right up our group's alley!

Loving it so far! Very interesting writing style.

I love the way she puts a sentence together -- it's like lazily floating on a river with twists and turns not quite knowing where you will end up but it never is confusing. I'm hoping to finish up this weekend!

This book reminds me of that one year for Halloween you were a pregnant nun😁

I just came across a pic from one of those years. I will send it. 😂

Omg i cried inside when Tilde threw Maries book of visions into the fire🥺

Whew! What a ride that book was. I read it over a few big chunks of time (with some breaks in between, obviously....so grateful for our relaxed book group) but then devoured the back half in one sitting.

I want to share a few links about this book....

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/bo...

Last fall, the NY Times reviewed the book, saying:

"Perhaps the greatest pleasure of this novel is also its most subtle. Groff is a gifted writer capable of deft pyrotechnics and well up to the challenges she sets herself, including that of rendering feverish apparitions of the Virgin as recorded by a seminal poet of the Western canon. One senses she doesn’t so much struggle to create her vision but is borne aloft on it, which is the page-by-page pleasure as we soar with her."

Isn't that so true?! Each time I picked up the book, I knew I was about to go on a ride that would bear me along with it, every page.

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment...

This article in Esquire looked at what little is known the poet Marie de France, but really fleshes out more of the history. Search that title, and you will find it.

This book in some ways reminded me a lot of Hamnet. In that book, we saw an intimate glimpse into the daily life of a family in Shakespeare's England and with Matrix we are transported back a few more centuries, but again get to see the intimate life and struggles of a nunnery...who are trying to keep out , not the plague, but the world of men (not named, only alluded to).

And yes Fey, my heart broke when she threw it in the fire!