I Love Historical Novels discussion

Lauren Groff, Matrix. Riverhead, 2021 (4 stars)

Marie is an illegitimate daughter of a noble family in the 1100s and an admirer and member of the court of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. After accompanying Eleanor on a crusade and then spending time at the court, Marie is exiled by Eleanor to serve as the prioress of a small rundown, depressing abbey in what later will become England. An unusually large, strong, well-educated woman, Marie gradually wins over the nuns and other residents and slowly builds up the abbey in wealth, size, and numbers, eventually becoming abbess. She has occasional visions from the Virgin Mary that help direct her activities, and with her knowledge of the inner workings of the courts of rulers and of the church, she has her own network of spies and informants. In her later years she conducts mass and confessions on her own (roles forbidden to women in the Catholic church), rather than bringing in priests from the outside, and her spiritually-oriented writings, apparently based on those of the real Marie, would be considered heresy if made known.

I have mixed feelings about this novel. On the plus side, it has an intriguing main character and plot, and it did keep me reading. I have an affinity for protagonists who, as in this tale, overcome odds and succeed through their own astuteness and hard work. The details about the time period and of life in an abbey seem well researched. The writing is lyrical, with well-chosen words.

On the other hand: When a novel is written entirely in narrative without using quotation marks and without, for example, setting out quoted poetry in a different paragraph format, it’s more difficult for me to read. I have to work at it more, which can mean I’m not as absorbed as I like to be in actually living the story. It seems, maybe, pretentious on the part of the author, as if she’s saying, “I’m good enough that I don’t have to follow the usual conventions or do anything make it easier for the reader.” (Maybe that’s true; that type of writing often does earn critical acclaim.)

Much of the plot is unlikely. Marie has her minions take on major construction projects, the biggest of which is isolating the abbey from all outsiders by creating an immense surrounding maze of forest, roads, paths, and tunnels. When she has a large building constructed for her own quarters and for those of rich ladies who come to live there, with well lighted space for manuscript copying and schoolrooms, she hires stone workers who are blindfolded when brought in. The workers somehow live there for an entire year of work, without ever knowing their way through the maze. When the abbey is attacked at night by jealous local nobility and other outsiders, they are thwarted by the maze and various traps, as well as by armed nuns and others attached to the abbey. I also had trouble understanding how Marie could still hold a strong lifelong love and attraction to Eleanor, despite consistently being treated so nastily by that ruler.

I recommend the novel to readers of serious historical fiction and of fiction with feminist themes, but the recommendation is with some reservations, summarized above.