Matrix

The book critics have been raving about Lauren Groff's latest book Matrix (#1,016).  Me, not so much.  The book centers around the character Marie de France, the first woman credited with writing French poetry in the twelfth century.  Nothing much else is known about her.  Here Lauren Groff has cast her as a royal bastard in love with Eleanor of Aquitaine, banished from court and sent to a remote and impoverished abbey.  Marie's determination to bring herself back to Eleanor's notice drives her to turn the abbey upside down as prioress and restore its fortunes.  It's basically a fantasy with heavy feminist and lesbian overtones.

There are some beautiful passages here, meditations on monastic living and the beauties of nature.  But there are also some curious things about this story.  Not one male character is given a name, and men in general are mentioned only in passing as brutes, rapists and thieves of money and power.  Marie feels she alone can protect the women under her care and goes to elaborate lengths to do so.  

Another thing that I find a bit hard to believe here was that Marie enters the abbey with no belief in gods,  In fact, she looks down on those who do believe.  Yet her earliest memory is being on crusade with her mother and aunts, and of her sole surviving aunt entering a convent.  This doesn't jibe with her memory of being brought up pagan.  Oh, well, that's probably just me.  Marie goes on to live a long and successful life in her isolated abbey.  

Sorry, but this book will never make my recommended reading list.  I will however, commend a visit to Regina Laudis Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut to you to further your knowledge of what abbey life is really like.  You'll come away refreshed.