Serious “plot” spoilers behind tags: I probably should have stopped reading this in the first hundred pages, when in the space of a few pages, a fourteen-year-old boy first discovers the suicide of his classmate, and then his drama teacher (who - surprise! - sparks his love of acting) gives him a surprise, consolatory blow job in the high school gym. Still, there are untruths made of words and untruths made of silences, and Mathilde had only ever lied to Lotto in what she never said.īut even that fell apart for me given how ridiculous I found most of the book. What she did not tell him balanced neatly with what she did.

Great swaths of her life were white space to her husband. The narrative constantly asks us: what is given up by each party in a relationship? What is worth giving up for a marriage, and how can two people stay together? There were a few poignant scenes where I really felt like Groff had captured this for Lotto and Mathilde, and I actually felt invested in their relationship: The entire thing is a bizarre parody of what two people’s life stories could actually be like, and the fantastical, absurd elements are what really stand out. But most importantly, if you like the grotesque, you will enjoy this book. If you like reading descriptions of fictional avant-garde plays that add modernist touches to ancient stories (think Antigone transformed into “Go”), you will enjoy this book. If you like convoluted metaphors and improbable life stories, you will enjoy this book. Lotto, clean as camphor at his neck and belly, like electrified pennies at the armpit, like chlorine at the groin. People told her she smiled like garlic, like chalk, like nothing at all. She imagined her husband’s mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, although her stationery had stunk of baby powder and rose perfume. Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. It tries so hard to be a literary masterpiece that you end up with asides like this one: But Fates and Furies is pretentious and overwritten. I mean, holy purple prose, Batman! I really loved Lauren Groff’s writing in Arcadia - it was beautiful and touching, with gorgeous metaphors.

Fates and furies by lauren groff