Fates and furies

At some times hard to read, the characters are not all likeable, yet still strangely compelling and sexy.

3.5 stars. I almost gave up halfway through. I took a month long break. The second half really turned it around for me. First half 2 stars, second half 4.5. Really shocked that this is not the authors first book (I don't mean that in a good way)

4.5 stars not because I loved it but because it's a freaking genius of a book.

This is a book I wouldn't have picked up from the subject matter alone, and but a couple of trusted sources recommended it, and man, were they right. On the surface, this is a story about a marriage, but it's also about how much or how little you can know the people around you in life. It's about perspective, and trauma, and the things that make us who we are, and it's done within the context of a modern Greek tragedy. The writing style, as I'm coming to expect from Lauren Groff, is superb enough to just make me angry at how good it is. Groff is good. Read her books.

One sentence synopsis... The story of a marriage divided into two parts - ‘Fates', centered around good-hearted (yet narcissistic) playwright Lotto and ‘Furies', shifting to focus on the mysterious ‘ice queen' Mathilde.

Read it if you like... stories where the couple at the center have two radically disparate views of their relationship and life together, ie. Gone Girl. Unconventional writing - Groff's sentences are more like declarative statements and she occasionally interrupts the narrative with Greek chorus-like asides.

Dream casting... Will Poulter as Lotto. Anya Taylor-Joy as Mathilde.

If I had any criticism it would be that it was a but too long.

That being said, solid book. Beautiful writing.

Fates and Furies is the story of the 24 year marriage of Lancelot “Lotto” Satterwhite, a failed actor turned celebrated playwright, and Mathilde Yoder, a woman with a blank past, no family or friends of her own to speak of. The first half of the novel tells the story that most of the world sees and that Lotto, a self absorbed man with an outsized need for encouragement and praise, accepts without question. It's the story that Lotto himself tells about their marriage. The second half of the novel reveals Mathilde's hidden past and how it has played a hidden part in the marriage that has been so admired by all their friends.

It's a good premise, but unfortunately I preferred the first half of the novel. I was aware that there was more to the story, but what I was reading felt true. The golden boy of college was failing to live up to his promise, the “perfect marriage” was under strain because of his depression and his wife's disappointment, and the burden of supporting the household falling solely on his wife's shoulders. When success finally comes, he is still needy, so although some of the burden is shifted, it's still Mathilde who is supporting the household. There is a lot of writing about Lotto and Mathilde's sex life, which some reviewers have thought excessive, but I read it as the (not 100% physical) attraction between them that makes it possible for the marriage to stay strong in spite of the strains.

The second part of the book just read like episodes of Dallas with hints of 50 Shades of Gray to me. Over the top unbelievable, lacking in emotional truth. I kept reading to get to the end, but I had essentially lost interest in the part of the book that was supposed to reveal deeper truths to me. Big disappointment.

3.5

Surprising in so many ways.

Oh how I loved this book. At almost 400 pages, around page 150 I did find myself wondering what else could possibly happen since a lot of ground had been covered already but I am so glad I stayed with it. A complicated tale about the lies we tell to ourselves and to each other in the name of love and personal ambition. I was completely wrapped up in this love story and deeply moved by its thoughts on relationships, art, and redemption.

I struggled to get going with this, it was only during the second half that the pace picked up.

''There was an enormous crack in the world.''

What constitutes a successful union between two people who love each other? The ability to have the courage to mend the cracks that appear in an alarming speed as the years go by. Now, in the marriage of Lotto and Mathilde, the cracks are there from the beginning. Especially in Lotto and all they have to do is to ignore them and move on. But Groff's novel is completely devoid of cracks or any other fault for that matter. In fact, it is plain and simple, one of the most interesting, daring and honest books I've ever had the pleasure to read.

I chose to read this novel, guided by the raving reviews of many beloved friends here, in Goodreads, and attracted by the claim that Groff had been inspired by Ancient Greek Tragedy. I was surprised to see that this is not just a very well-written love story, but also an immensely beautiful trip down the historical changes that New York and its society underwent from the early 90s all the way through our troubled present. To do so through the eyes of a squad of artists, in all their vanity and sensitivity, was satisfying and, frankly, hugely entertaining.

Groff touches upon so many subjects, one wouldn't know where to begin. The way I see it, the main themes are love and aspirations. We witness a relationship that starts in a rather unorthodox way. Lotto and Mathilde get married out of the blue and then, they have to learn how to live together, how to fight the daily problems, how to know each other and come to understand themselves in the process. Their relationship is presented in such a beautiful way that even a sworn enemy of marriage (such as myself) has to take a step back and contemplate for a while.

However, in my opinion, the notion that lies at the heart of the story is the way our aspirations influence our course in life once they are fulfilled or-worse- once we realise that they have become dreams of a past that is slowly fading away...Groff's writing took me back to the time when I was studying, when me and my friends thought that we would be able to change the world once we graduate from university. Instead, we slowly found out that the world actually changed us. Worries about our families, our work, our financial status, our relationships with our loved ones, all those things that make you feel you have entered the universe of the adults and their responsibilities.

Lotto, in particular, changes route and tries to fulfill his ambitions from a different starting point. And he succeeds. Mathilde? She remains the steady rock that binds him to the present and holds their life together. There comes my only problem with the novel. Mathilde makes the decision to stop working after Lotto's success -which took a long time to take place- and becomes the wife who cleans, cooks, etc. Perhaps, she didn't want to follow her dreams, after all. Perhaps,she found fulfillment through the role of the lady of the house, perhaps she needed to cast away her own demons of the past. I don't know and I don't judge her. I respect it, but I don't understand it, and it was at that time when I felt that the book was too centered to Lotto and his actions. This was too harsh of me, but I couldn't have foreseen the great bomb that exploded and shuttered everything to pieces...

What can I say about Groff's writing? I'm going to resort to clichés, but I cannot help it. The language she uses is so powerful, so immediate, so creative. The style is unique, a third-person narration, with some slight but intricately woven hints of stream of consciousness. The dialogue is sharp, without unnecessary words, the pace leaves you breathless in a story that spans over twenty years, centered on two people. I enjoyed the New York colloquialisms and the fact that I could see and feel the changing city over the years, changes that were depicted in the characters and their interactions.

What is the most fascinating element in this novel? For me, it is the title. Fates and Furies... Why Fates? Why Furies? It had me wondering. The notion of Fate lies at the centre of the Greek tragedies, the three women who controlled and, eventually, cut the thread of all mortals' lives, the Moirai : Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis. The Furies, the Erinyes, were wild, winged female deities. Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone. They hunted and haunted the wrongdoers without mercy, for the rest of their lives. Orestes is the well-known example, punished for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra. So, Fates and Furies are our daily escorts, from the moment we are born until the day we depart from this world. They are the two sides of the same coin and Groff uses them in such a successful way that would make Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus proud...

I was reading this book while I was commuting to work and back. There were instances when it almost slipped off my hands out of sheer shock, others because of my anger caused by certain stupid decisions of the couple. I don't know how can anyone read this novel and feel absolutely nothing. I think it's impossible. One cannot remain indifferent in front of life and Lauren Groff takes life's notions, twists them and awakes every bit and every kind of emotion to the reader. It is a book that speaks with a voice of anger, despair and hope, and we feel compelled to listen...Carefully...

Debating between 3 and 4 stars. The novel about a married couple - full of glamour and sex and intrigue and parties and family mysteries and dark pasts and deception and lies - is narrated in an interesting style, but it's main fault is that even though the characters seem fascinating, you never really start to like them, let alone care for them. If I hadn't listened to it on audiobook, I might not have made it all the way through, though I can say, the second half - narrated from the perspective of the wife - definitely invigorated my interest in the story a lot.

Well, it took a long time to get through the initial chapters, but once Lotto makes his way out of boarding school, it picks up! I have to say that I was skeptical of the male perspective. If I want to read about a sexist male, I want to read it from a male author. That being said, I think it carried well. Groff writes beautifully. I hope marriage isn't this hard.

This book was so different than I expected. I thought it would be trite, perhaps humorous at times. I found it richly layered with a Gothic feel; it was quite a bit darker than I anticipated. I'd give this book 5 stars for plot and Groff's wonderful writing, 2.5 for character likability.

The less said the better... But there's enough here to keep this tale feeling fresh.

Atrocious. Date I start off my review in the one-word style of the author? Yes!

Lauren Groff's “Fates and Furies” is truly an overrated, pretentious waste of paper and time.

Other reviewers have selected examples of said awful writing, but i find that there are far too many poorly written sentences to list them here given the character limit.

I shall stop here as the time spent reading even the first three pages could have been used doing a million, more j teetering things.

The first half of this book, Lotto's story was a 3-star read. Lotto is so pretentious and entitled. Well, that turns out to be the point, because the second half, Mathilde's 5-star story, changes everything and makes the entire book worthwhile.

What to say, what to say. Definitely not for me. I didn't like the prose style (the one word sentences, for instance), didn't like the plot (supposedly some sort of Greek tragedy in modern times), didn't like any of the characters (a bunch of psychopaths). It was supposed to be two versions of the same marriage, told first by the husband then by the wife. But to do so, the first part (“fates”), told by the husband, felt like he was borderline cognitively impaired. Shallow and stupid. The second half, told by the wife (“furies”), felt to me as improbable and absurd. (And the dog named God didn't help it at all.)

Did not care for this one. One reviewer said it seemed like the characters were often compelled to lick other people's faces, which is true. Is that a thing? A symbolic thing? Otherwise, I already don't remember much about it.

At first, I found this book to be melodramatic, written in an overly-literary style. The fractured timeline felt fumbled, forced, and confusing while the characters were poorly depicted and unlike-able, so I had no image of them in my brain and carved no space for them in my heart.

However, by the second act, it grew on me. It fit Mathilde's consciousness much better than Lotto's, and her story and her character are more interesting, anyways. The writing seemed to make more sense as I began to see the meta of it, the play within the play, the tragedy. I still found the bracketed asides to be a bit much, but will admit once I let go of the absurdity of it, I fell in deeply. And though on the whole a bit depressing, in the end I found it to be...touching, almost hopeful, and in its own way, rather beautiful.

Though a slow starter and definitely not for everyone, if you can get past the hammed-up writing and poor character writing, it's a decent read.

So so beautiful to read. The extremity of Mathilde in Furies caused a disconnect for me, but it was still enjoyable all the way through.

bestseller for a reason. interesting comparison to be made with gone girl perhaps.

Beautifully written. I loved Lotto's story, but Mathilde's was the one I felt for. The writing is absolutely worth five stars, four for the story.

I hate to write this review, because it's completely unexpected; after hearing all the positive buzz, I just knew I'd love this story. Man's pov and woman's pov. Mythological elements. Bloggers raving about how wonderful it is. NPR chose it as a book club pick.

Well, for whatever reason, I didn't love it. I forced myself to keep reading it. So sad to share this.

I've been puzzling over why F&F and I didn't become friends. I'm still not really sure, but I will say that I didn't like any of the characters, especially the two main characters. (I can't remember when I've read a book where so many people committed suicide and where I cared so little about their passings.) And I hated reading the text; the writing felt forced to me, like it had been heavily workshopped.

Just my thoughts, and you may feel completely different after your read. I certainly hope you do.