Matrix: A Novel
Lauren GroffCast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, 17-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 & beset by disease.
At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus & love in collective life with her singular & 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, & a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors & crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads & protects. But in a world that is shifting & 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 & the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, & religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, & a woman that history moves both through & around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates & Furies, is a defiant & timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.