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Matrix

A Novel

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Matrix

By: Lauren Groff
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

WINNER OF THE 2022 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2021

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, The Financial Times, Good Housekeeping, Esquire, Vulture, Marie Claire, Vox, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and more!

“A relentless exhibition of Groff’s freakish talent. In just over 250 pages, she gives us a character study to rival Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell .” – USA Today

“An electric reimagining . . . feminist, sensual . . . unforgettable.” – O, The Oprah Magazine

“Thrilling and heartbreaking.” –Time Magazine

“[A] page-by-page pleasure as we soar with her.” –New York Times

One of our best American writers, Lauren Groff returns with her exhilarating first new novel since the groundbreaking Fates and Furies.

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.

At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be bulwark enough?

Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff’s new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.

©2021 Lauren Groff (P)2021 Listening Library Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Medieval Women's Fiction Middle Ages England Heartfelt Inspiring Thought-Provoking Royalty

Interview: Lauren Groff Brings a Modern Twist to 12th-Century Nuns

Matrix
'I never want to be the writer who writes the same book over and over again.'
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  • Matrix
  • 'I never want to be the writer who writes the same book over and over again.'

Critic reviews

“A radiant novel about the 12th-century poet and mystic Marie de France. . . Groff richly imagines Marie's decades of exile in a royal convent, which she eventually leads. A charged novel about female ambition.” – Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

“Just when it seems there are nothing but chronicles of decline and ruin comes Lauren Groff’s Matrix, about a self-sufficient abbey of 12th-century nuns—a shining, all-female utopian community… it is finally its spirit of celebration that gives this novel its many moments of beauty.” – Wall Street Journal

“An electric reimagining . . . feminist, sensual . . . unforgettable.” – O, The Oprah Magazine

Rich Historical Detail • Complex Female Characters • Beautiful Reading • Exceptional Voice Acting • Immersive Storytelling
Highly rated for:
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The narrator is incredible. The writing magical, full of energy. A fable for our time.

Narration

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Great writing, fabulous performance, Lauren Groff is one of my faves. Adjoa Andoh is exceptional with the content and giving voice to each character.

Loved every minute

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Very impressed with the amazing narrator. It’s not an easy story to tell but she does it beautifully.

Come for the great writing, stay for the narration

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Incredible, stunning and haunting book.
Thoroughly enjoyed this mystical world. Lauren Groff is a genius!!!!

Best book I’ve read in awhile!

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interesting and immersive character development of the main character providing a different perspective that you would normally have of the time

interesting reas

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There’s more to this story than on the surface. Listening to the message. Strong woman who didn’t stop.

Keep listening

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I saw this was highly rated, so I decided to try listening to this audiobook. And I enjoyed it highly! Marie, the illegitimate half-sister of King Henry II of England, is sent by Henry's wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine to become a nun at a rundown abbey in England during the twelfth-century. Though she resents losing her freedom and finds the abbey a wreck, Marie settles into life as a nun and begins to raise the abbey from poverty to influence.

It was interesting seeing how Marie goes from a skeptic who scoffs at Christianity to a deeply pious and even mystic devotee. She begins to see joy and family in the work at the abbey, from growing their own food to creating manuscripts (something unheard of for nuns because only men did it) to building projects. She also conversely becomes more sure of her own power and authority, though she never certainly was timid or weak! But her will and desire to see her place thrive help Marie out of some pretty sticky situations, even amongst her fellow nuns.

I liked Marie, of course, but I also enjoyed Nest, Goda, Tilde, Wulfhild and Eleanor's characters. All of them grow or develop in different ways. Marie's development is the key driver of the story, but Nest and Tilde also act as the counterbalance to Marie as spiritual conscience (Tilde) and voice of the realities of life (Nest). Goda, who is unlikeable initially and still acidic to her fellow nuns, shows her true warmth and loyalty even when she disapproves of Marie's choices. Wulfhild, whom Marie sees herself in, is also what Marie might have been had she had her freedom and has almost her strength of will to match. And as someone who's always enjoyed reading about Eleanor of Aquitaine, hearing her many sides (proud, biting, witty, flirtatious, etc.) was fun to listen to.

This is also a bit of a spoiler, but lesbian sex does pop up in the story and appear multiple times. The sex scenes are mostly metaphorical, but can get graphic so fair warning!

I also found it interesting how Groff conflated the poet Marie de France with Marie, half-sister of King Henry II, in this story. Marie de France's true identity isn't known but it's very viable she was Marie Plantagenet. Marie de France's works also follow some of the same themes as Marie's visions, but that could've been Groff's authorship at work to make the connection stronger.

Adjoa Andoh also did a great job with reading this. Marie's husky tones, Goda's sharp answers, Sprota's (a late character but it does take up several pages) false humility, Tilde's gentle but mostly timidness, it all comes through really well.

I definitely recommend this novel if you're into good stories done with a stellar reader. I'm now curious to read or listen to Groff's other works after hearing this jewel.

Power to the Women

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Matrix was recommended to me by my best friend (a fellow English Professor Emerita), so I had no doubt that it would be worth my time and careful attention. It’s the first Lauren Groff work that I’ve “read,” and having just finished it, I would happily buy the print version and read it again. Why?

First, it’s a wonderfully specific historical novel set in the 1200’s (the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine). Its central character, Marie (Marie de France) is “three heads” too tall, ugly by her time’s standards, and all angles. She is also a bastardess offshoot of the French royal family. What to do with this well-educated, unmarriagable female? Only one option: “bury” her in a small, unimportant nunnery, far from the royals’ seat of power, of course.

Off to the “isle of mud,” l’Angleterre (England), she goes with one trunk carrying some coin, a few pieces of her dead mother’s jewelry and clothes that a nun wouldn’t be caught dead in. She lands where her lady’s education—speaking, reading and writing French and Latin, court manners, a slight familiarity but no real interest in ecclesiastical rules and roles—doesn’t include English. She’d rather follow Eleanor, her life’s idol and great love, by wearing armor, mounting a horse, and heading off for the next Crusade. Instead, at seventeen, she’s a prisoner in one of the smallest, poorest nunneries of the period.

The story reveals her external and internal life from her arrival at the nunnery at age seventeen to her death as the nunnery’s longtime Abbess in her late seventies.

Marie, by prior arrangement, likely $$, between her family and the religious order, will hold the position of Prioress, the number two position at the nunnery once she completes novice training and takes the veil. This arrangement assures that she will inherit the Abbess position and live out the very long remainder of her life at this highly regulated outpost where the inhabitants are almost starving and certainly freezing. One of the humorous moments near the beginning of the novel is when she’s told that she must bathe before putting on her new garments. She assures them that she doesn’t need a bath because she bathed just four months earlier. The nun tells her that all novices and nuns must bathe monthly, and all staff must bathe every two months. She’s stunned. This won’t be her last surprise.

But, mostly, she will surprise and shock her new world. Physically ugly, a giantess “three heads too tall to be a woman,” amazingly strong and fleet, facile in mind, rebellious in spirit, and not the least interested in a religious vocation, Marie begins her abbey life as a resentful novice and ends it as a mystic and transformative religious force.

This gloriously written biography of her impact, both on the abbey and the secular inhabitants who live in the island’s towns that are served by and must support that abbey, is a small-scale reflection of the century’s larger religious events—successive (though inevitably failing) crusades to retake Jerusalem as a symbolic remaking of the holy vision of Christendom—but with a difference: Marie’s methods work. She succeeds.

The tiny, dirty, and painfully starving abbey she was forced to join becomes a large, beautiful and modern religious center filled with industry, ripe fields and large pastures of sheep and cattle. It’s transformation is even more amazing, but I’ll not spoil your enjoyment by revealing all of the changes introduced by forward-thinking members of her community. Nor will I describe Marie’s holy visions and her methods of interpreting them to the everyday benefit of her abbey.

I will, however, urge you to enjoy this marvelous novel, which was short-listed for the National Book Award.

Deftly Written and Narrated, Deeply Moving Historical Fiction

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I read The Vaster Wilds recently, and when I found out that it was part of a triptych and that Matrix was the first book in the triptych I had to listen. I think it helped that I listened to (and enjoyed) The Vaster Wilds first, because it got me used to how the story unfolds and to Groff’s writing style. At the heart, it is a simple story of a woman running an abbey. But it’s so much more than that and it touches on so many topics that are continued in The Vaster Wilds. The narration was amazing and brought the text to life because if I were reading the book I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much as I did as an audiobook.

The narration was perfection

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The characters are so beautifully and lovingly drawn. So many powerful women in one book! Yay for strong women!

fantastic story richly narrated!

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