We first meet Marie as a gangly 17-year-old, furious at being banished by her half-sister the queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, to an England “thick with sheep and newts”, to rot away her days among the “scrawny and chilblained” inhabitants of the “glum, damp abbey”. Matrix focuses less on Marie the author and more on Marie the abbess – and if you think that doesn’t sound like the obvious angle for a fun and engaging story, you underestimate the scope of Groff’s imagination and talent. Groff bases her story on the theory that Marie of France was in fact one and the same person as Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury, an illegitimate half-sister to King Henry II of England, under whose tenure the abbey became so powerful that by the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, it was the second wealthiest in England. Matrix, her fourth novel (and unexpected handbrake turn into historical fiction she was previously best-known for 2015’s portrait of a contemporary marriage, Fates and Furies), imagines the life of Marie of France, a real historical figure whose collection of 12th-century romances is still studied by English undergraduates today. Lauren Groff almost – almost – makes me want to be a medieval nun.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |