Matrix

I had no idea 12th century nuns could be as violent or as libidinous!

“She rides out of the forest alone. Seventeen years old, in the cold March drizzle, Marie who comes from France.” I read these opening sentences over and over. They both threw me off and enchanted me. What is this strange cadence? I wondered.

The song of the words wove around me and drew me into a world both political and mystical. In some ways like the Avalon of Marion Zimmer Bradley, in other ways, most definitely not. I have friends who are Lauren Groff fans. I have never made it past the first few pages… until I picked this… show more.

One does not imagine a novel that takes place almost exclusively inside a 12th-century British convent to be a form of escapism, but then, one is often wrong. And by one, I mean me. I picked up Lauren Groff’s Matrix on a whim when my writer friend Amber Sparks posted illustrations her 8-year-old daughter did, inspired by the book.

From the opening page, I was moved and astounded by the depth of historical detail Groff imbues her heroine’s world with and by the sheer force of feminine, feminist creativity propelling the book forward. There are labyrinths and orchards, mystical visions,… show more.

This is a book I often give to friends for birthdays, etc. It is a delightfully strange and profound tale of a 12th-century French girl who is sent to an English convent, where she forms her own city of women within the walls.

The protagonist, Marie de France, has an unflinching vision of an alternate world informed by divine visions. It’s a strange joy to read on as Marie reimagines a decrepit abbey.

I never imagined I would be so invested in the lives of 12th-century nuns, but here we are.

Groff’s writing has such energy, I was completely consumed by the story of Marie, who, guided by visions, transforms an English convent into a utopia for the nuns within, protected from the world without. I was blown away by the sheer amount of knowledge that adds texture to the book: knowledge of plants, animals, medicinal herbs, clothing.

It feels deeply researched but not tedious. Everything about this novel feels propulsive.

Groff paints a picture of medieval France so stunning that it makes you care about a character so intensely it’s almost as if you were having sex.

The extent of the paradox of being in love with a cloistered (literally) lesbian abbess who “lived” eight hundred years ago is matched only by the bloodlust of rooting for her to murder and outlive her enemies.

I don’t often read historical fiction, but Matrix had a sensibility that resonated strongly with my own modern confidence and spirit and yet also felt accurate, in so many ways, for that woman in that twelfth-century nunnery.

The plot was deeply satisfying. We marched along with this young nun on her surprisingly quick path to achievement and success. If the victories were not easily won, I still had a constant sense of winning. That was exhilarating!

And then the ending took a turn that I found both profound and radical—something that connected strongly to environmental issues today and the world… show more.

Lauren Groff is one of the world’s greatest novelists, and Matrix – published two years ago – is further proof of it. I’m always a book behind the times (she published The Vaster Wilds this year, which is probably a masterpiece too).

Matrix imagines a life of Marie de France, sent away from the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine to become prioress of an impoverished, minor abbey, which Marie turns into a mystical religio-feminist utopia. Every word is masterful, every sentence a work of art, and the novel left me feeling alive, scared, and sad. It’s immersive and transcendent.

A young woman unloved, exiled from court, given a thankless job running an impoverished abbey, and she can succeed only by breaking rules. What’s not to like?

Even better, the rules she breaks give her and the nuns she supervises freedom to thrive.

Groff dramatizes the struggle over the use of power, the difference between human goodness and a leader’s greatness, how civilizations rise and fall, a woman’s place in making history—and I can feel it all, not just see it.

The sheer breadth and depth of this deceptively simple story knock me over, to say nothing of the prose,… show more.

Matrix pulled me in immediately. I loved the realness of the setting: the mud and the cold and the food and the smells. Life in the middle ages wasn’t easy, and Groff’s novel doesn’t try to romanticize that. I also loved the protagonist, a woman who gradually builds a position of power for herself. Groff explores sexuality and desire, community and meaning, religion and power on a scale that is both personal and profound.