Book Review - Lauren Groff's Matrix
Published by: Riverhead Books
Publication Date: September 7th, 2021
Format: Kindle, 272 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
Marie's life isn't exactly blessed. A child of rape she is the half-sister of Henry II of England. When Eleanor of Aquitaine marries Henry it is made very clear that Marie will no longer be welcome in the French court. So she follows Eleanor to England with only her servant Cecile as company. Marie's attraction to Eleanor combined with having no marriage prospects set her fate in motion. Who would marry a gangly, unattractive, illegitimate seventeen year old with a liking for the ladies anyway? Torn away from Eleanor and Cecile she is once more moved along. This time to an abbey. She is young and the nuns are old and sick. Her first instinct is to escape. To get back to Eleanor any way she can. If she can just win Eleanor's favor everything will be well. She starts to write a series of lais. In these poems she pours out her heart. And yet Eleanor never responds. Disillusioned Marie gradually accepts her fate and then embraces it. She starts with nutrition. If the nuns can eat well they can live well. She takes stock of the skills her nuns have and some become farmers, some become healers, each to their own ability they start to shine. Marie enforces the sanctity of the abbey's lands and taxes squatters. While Eleanor installed Marie as prioress of the abbey it's by Marie's own skills that she rises to abbess. She creates a haven for her nuns. They are safe, content, and well cared for. They even have a very active sex life. The fact that in the beginning Marie didn't view herself as strongly religious doesn't matter as time goes on. Because fate has chosen her and she is touched by divine visions. These visions help to protect the community she has built. She builds herself a world apart. The patriarchy of the outside world doesn't like the wealth she is hoarding and plot against her. Some of the nuns even question her power. But when power is used to protect is it such a bad thing? Her people, her world, thrives. But what will happen when she is no longer protector? How will history view her? As salvation or Satan?
Matrix is one of those books that almost defies any reviewers attempts to review it. Lauren Groff is obviously a talented writer yet at the same time what exactly did she write here? What on Earth did I just read? I think I liked it didn't I? Wait are the nuns having "healing" sex again? Boiled down to it's basics we have a group of sexually active nuns who create a female utopia led by a visionary leader that pisses off the patriarchy. And then the leader dies. I'm trying to remember if she "saw" her death coming because that would have been kind of ironic. I know she "felt" it but "saw" it would have been more on point. My issue with Matrix was more in how it was written. Groff spent time with Benedictine nuns at the Regina Laudis Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Being among the educated woman caring for each other she thought it kind of a utopia. Which carried through into the book. But as you see with her immersing herself in the Benedictine lifestyle she is very method. I mean she assumed that all readers would get that the title comes from the Latin for mother... I was not one of those readers. In fact until I started writing this review I had no idea how the title connected to the narrative so at least now I know that. So it's not a stretch to say that Groff really does her research. And yet the kind of faux Middle Ages first person patois she writes the story in is off-putting. I thought and still think that it was an attempt to be "of the time." She wanted us so in Marie's world, so in her head, that she created her own dialect. Which, when you're dropping modern vernacular like "rube" into the conversation takes your readers out of the narrative. I mean it would be over six hundred years until the word "rube" came about. Me being me, this then resulted in a discussion with my book club as to whether she really meant to write like she was in the Middle Ages or just in a way that would be unique. Given her whole background and her education and her going to hang out at an abbey for awhile, I think my argument holds together. She wanted her writing to feel "of the time" like Chaucer a few hundred years later. She just wasn't as thorough as she thought. She in fact might be a bit of a rube.
OK, I know with what I'm about to admit everyone is going to be shocked, but until this miniseries I had not heard of or watched the original movie adaptation of Rumer Godden's book that is a classic starring Deborah Kerr. Black Narcissus won Oscars and accolades when it was released in 1947, eerily on the day that would be my birthday come the seventies. So, putting aside my lack of a complete film education, what it meant was I was going into this series fresh. In fact I saw an ad only a day before it aired and it was being touted as Diana Rigg's last appearance, that is until Edgar Wright admits defeat and releases Last Night in Soho to streaming, so I said, let's see what this Black Narcissus is all about! Also I have probably rightly pissed off Edgar Wright now by not knowing this movie and saying that movie theaters are dead and streaming is the only safe option in this day and age. Oh well, I'm still looking forward to Last Night in Soho... So this version of Black Narcissus, compared to no other, was a wonderful little idyll of nuns trying to do good against all odds in a very haunted place. I mean this miniseries just oozed Gothic vibes, it was delicious! I constantly love how the building blocks of what is considered Gothic can be changed time and time again to create a whole new slant that you'd never think of. Nuns tend to align themselves more with the horror genre, and to tackle their desires and damnation in a human and real way within the Gothic sphere felt fresh to me, and again note I haven't seen the original film. Though the driving force of the three episode miniseries is Sister Ruth and her going more and more off the rails in this remote location. I don't know if you're supposed to hate Sister Ruth and long for her corruption and death, but I totally did. Her obsession with the male caretaker, Mr. Dean, and her delusions about Mr. Dean and Sister Clodagh make her more and more unstable and I loved every minute of it. I think this was all enhanced by the performace of Aisling Franciosi as Sister Ruth. I knew I knew her from somewhere and wherever that was I hated her in that. Turns out it was The Fall, the Gillian Anderson/Jamie Dornan show, which is, in my mind, the most overrated piece of shit I have ever watched. It is easily one of the worst shows I've ever seen and wish I could forget I ever saw it. Anyway, Aisling was the shitty teenager in love with the father of the kids she babysat and who knew he was a killer and was all OK with that. So yeah, I liked seeing her suffer in this. But does that say more about me or Black Narcissus?
Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal
