| title: Matrix by: Groff, Lauren published: 2021-09-23 read: 2023-03 preview | |
Finished it this morning, with a sigh of satisfaction. Finally done!
Now, I’m not very much a religious person. Not at all, in fact. So had I known more of this book, I’d have passed. Indeed, somewhere in the middle I thought, oh come on I get sick of this let’s forget it, but then it felt so close to the finish, that I pressed on.
A good decision? Hard to say. At least some form of accomplishment.
Enough complaining. The book plays just before and after the year 1200, in England. And the main character is Marie de France. Surely a name to you well-educated – new to me before I got into this book. Or is it about her? Marie de France, the poet about whom almost nothing is known (and may not even have existed as such), but who is the authors of Lais of Marie de France; translated Aesop’s fables, and wrote other works (I’m quoting wikipedia here). And Marie, the abbess of a monastery, bringing it from extreme poverty to extreme richness in the 60 years that she reigns it.
The book brings life to the unknown person of Marie the France, with literary freedom impounding on history. Marie, when she is banned to the convent by the queen, Eleanor of Acquitaine. Marie, bastard daughter of Eleanor’s father’s raping adventures:
Twelve-year-old Marie’s bitter anguish at the high windy burial ground; and afterward the two years of loneliness because her mother insisted her death remain a secret, for the family wolves would strip the estate from Marie as soon as they heard, she being just a maiden bastardess formed of rape, not entitled to a thing; two lonely years of Marie wringing what coin she could from the land. Then the hooves on the far bridge and the flight up to Rouen then across the channel to her legitimate half-sibling’s royal court at Westminster, where Marie appalled everyone with her ravenousness, her rawness, her gauche bigboned body; where most privileges accorded her royal blood she lost due to the faults of her person.
A half-sister, therefore, and not respected. Marie, at 17, banned to that convent where poverty and disease rules, brings things in order and is widely respected, feared, loved, hated, but never ignored.
By the time Marie was elected abbess, the heat of the end of her menses had withdrawn from her. Now she is no longer touched by the curse of Eve. When the blood stopped, the knives that had twisted in her since she was fourteen were at last removed from her womb. She is given instead a long, cold clarity. She can see for a great distance now. She can see for eons. She will write of the first great, ground-trembling vision later in a private book, hidden from her nuns. She will describe vividly what happens. It is shortly before Vespers. The twilight hangs over the hills, the sun dies in loops of gold and shadow. Behind her the abbey is small and white in the last blaze. The swallows flick in arcs above.
And thus goes the book. My take aways: I now know of Marie de France, but how this fits in with the whole Plantagenet stories – Shakespeareans beware – I don’t fully appreciate. It’s a long time, after all, and these high middle ages were a bit, quite a bit, different from today, right?
Interesting fact: no men in this book. Or almost none. There are a few faceless, nameless, stonecutters. And, the nuns being upset that the abbess, Marie, does the high mass, which is not supposed to be done by a woman. But that’s about it. All good, all the same.
Again: the book is done, I can recommend it if you want to learn a bit, perhaps, about Marie de France, or at least by this Marie and her queen. Otherwise, I cannot give an outright recommendation, and go against the stream and high acclaim of this recent novel. Despite its beautiful language. Maybe a tad too impersonal for me.