Matrix

A Novel

By: Lauren Groff

Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh

Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

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

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

Amazing performance

A beautiful narrative, woman-centered, and the highest quality historical fiction. But the reading! An absolutely stellar performance, really one of the best I’ve listened to.

Fascinating storytelling and a study in leadership

A 17 year old is thrust into a nunnery and turns it into a thriving safe haven for women in the middle ages.

Astonishing performance!

Adjoa Andoh was magnificent! Great story that was certainly elevated by the acting. The story is complex so it requires concentration in listening, but worth the hours of listening. Superb!

Captivating and bewitching!

The author’s and narrator’s roll out like a silk river. Wave after wave of beauty.

Brilliant narration!

Captivating story that made me research the real Marie and her abbey. The narrator gave a stunning performance.

Crafted with loose ends

Marie so big and full yet her visions and intentions seemed incomplete. I enjoyed the poetic landscape but felt there was a missing bit.

Could not put it down.

I have dyslexia and reading along with the audio book version made it easier and gave me back the joy of reading.

I love this book. It made me feel all the emotions. The ending with short and sweet and at first I was wanting more, however after thinking about it, I felt that it went with how life really is. You live then you don't live anymore and life moves on.

Interesting Story But Obnoxious Narrator

I liked the story but found the narrator to be overly dramatic, bordering on obnoxious. It was almost like she was reading Shakespeare—a little over the top. This is a very well written book but Shakespeare it is not. I much preferred The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell.

Powerful book. Gripping narrative

Empowering story beautifully written. Well worth retelling the stories of this extraordinary woman’s life to give strength, comfort, and warning. The narration is equally compelling and powerful

Wonderful story well written and narratives

I really loved this book. I have always wondered what the life of a nun was like back in the days when becoming a nun was one of the few options for a woman who didn’t want to , or had no chance of, marrying a man or becoming a prostitute. Especially it always seeme to me it might be a place where a woman with a little education might use such education in the Middle Ages. But I always thought that the politics of living in an all female monastic community, especially if one ended up there not because of great devotion to God but because of a harsh world where there ws no other place for you, would be a challenge in itself. So I think part of me has always wanted a story like this. Marie is unusual enough to be a fascinating feminist figure, but of her time enough for the story to sound real. The details of how the convent runs, the grimness of how diseases and bad crops are ever present threats not to mention the politics of making the institution one serves financially prosperous when more powerful male run branches of the church and royalty can at any time raid that prosperity and the very believable characterization of her sister nuns in all their humanity was just a fascinating story to me. Marie’s increasing religiosity ( of a radically nonconformist type) is also an important story thread.

Groffs writing is definitely part of what makes this book such a pleasure. It’s vivid and poetic in its description of the natural world of the12th century as well as the description of the enormous efforts made to tame nature into a useful form and the wildness that is lost in the process. It’s also wonderful in its description about the undercurrents of emotions and yearnings that would exist leading a life that is lacking in privacy and demanding while also contemplative. The narrator of this audible version did an amazing job with voices and accents which added a lot to the storytelling.
Just loved this audiobook I’m every way

Loved the whole story from beginning to end.