Fates and Furies

With Fates and Furies Lauren Groff goes many levels below the surface of a marriage, into a place that is perhaps as hard to reach as it is to describe, but Groff, a bold and marvellous writer, is able to do both. Because she’s so vitally talented line for line and passage for passage, and because her ideas about the ways in which two people can live together and live inside each other, or fall away from each other, or betray each other, feel foundationally sound and true, Fates and Furies becomes a book to submit to, and be knocked out by, as I certainly was.

Meg Wolitzer, bestselling author of THE INTERESTINGS

In a swirling miasma of language, plot, and Greek mythology, Groff weaves a fierce and gripping tale of true love gone asunder…Groff's prose is variously dewy, defiant, salacious, and bleak – a hurricane of words thrown together on every page. Yet so much of the power in this book lies in what's unspoken…It's an intoxicating elixir.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

An absorbing story of a modern marriage framed in Greek mythology. Groff’s sharply drawn portrait of a marriage begins on a cold Maine beach, with newlyweds "on their knees, now, though the sand was rough and hurt. It didn’t matter. They were reduced to mouths and hands." This opener ushers in an ambitious, knowing novel besotted with sex – in a kaleidoscope of variety – much more abundant than the commune-dwellers got up to in Groff’s luminous Arcadia (2012). The story centers first on Lancelot "Lotto" Satterwhite, a dashing actor at Vassar, who marries his classmate, flounders, then becomes a famous playwright. Lotto’s name evokes the lottery – and the Fates, as his half of the book is titled. His wife, the imperial and striking Mathilde, takes over the second section, Furies, astir with grief and revenge. The plotting is exquisite, and the sentences hum; Groff writes with a pleasurable, bantering vividness . . . An intricate plot, perfect title, and a harrowing look at the tie that binds.

Kirkus (starred review)

Like a classic tragedy, Groff’s novel offers high drama, hubris, and epic love, complete with Greek chorus–like asides. A singular and compelling literary read, populated with extraordinary characters; highly recommended.

Library Journal (starred review)

Fates and Furies is devastatingly good, with the most satisfying ending I've read in a long time. The writing is gorgeous, the plot twisting, and the characters are almost too real – the only thing that keeps it from being the Platonic ideal of a novel is that it can only be read for the first time once. The only response that seemed sufficient in the hours after finishing it was to send several dozen roses, a cake, and my heart to Lauren Groff.

Sara Taylor, author of THE SHORE

Fates and Furies is a dazzling novel, its people and its prose wondrously alive from page one. At once intimate and sweeping, this is the story of a marriage as parallel myths-- flaring with passion and betrayal, with redemption and retribution, with the sort of heart-breaking, head-slapping secrets that make you want to seek out someone else who's read it. Lauren Groff is a powerful and graceful writer, one of the best of her generation.

Jess Walter, bestselling author of BEAUTIFUL RUINS

Comparisons to Gone Girl seem on the surface to fit perfectly. We have a golden couple, Lotto and Mathilde, we have a dark past – like Amy, Lotto is an heir to a large fortune. Yet Fates and Furies is far more subtle – Groff is considering the very nature of story-telling itself… I was reminded more than anything of Macarthy’s The Group... The fates and furies who narrate the novel are never intrusive, their interventions are rare and they pass on the whole unnoticed, but I felt that this worked better than a more grandiose presence might have done. Through them, Groff channels a grace for her protagonists – this is not a story of heroes and villains but rather of humans who long to be better than they are.

Nudge

Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff’s remarkable new novel, explodes and rages past any such preconceptions, insisting that the examination of a long-term relationship can be a perfect vehicle for exploring no less than the nature of existence – the domestic a doorway to the philosophical…The deepest satisfaction gained by reading "Furies" after "Fates" lies less in admiring how tidily the puzzle pieces snap together – though they do – than in experiencing one’s own kaleidoscopic shift of emotions and concerns…Rare and impressive…The aforementioned wordplay evokes Nabokov…Groff has created a novel of extraordinary and genuine complexity…The word "ambitious" is often used as code for "overly ambitious", a signal that an author’s execution has fallen short. No such hidden message here. Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers – with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout.

New York Times

There are echoes of Gone Girl in this vivid, poetic examination of a marriage that isn’t all it seems.

Glamour

Fates and Furies will keep you gripped until the end. It’s a fascinating study of how relationships are sustained and sacrificed…it is sumptuously written at every turn. For an autumn read to get firmly stuck into, look no further.

Running in Heels

Addictive to read ... Groff has drawn a woman so complex it seems that with every chapter a new layer is revealed, each as deliciously intriguing as the next … The result is a compelling portrait of an unconventional marriage across two decades.

Stylist

Even from her impossibly high starting point, Lauren Groff just keeps getting better and better…But her new novel, Fates and Furies, is a clear-the-ground triumph ... Not yet 40, Groff nonetheless captures the complicated ways love blesses, transforms and, yes, deceives us over many years…Groff writes in prose that seems to sigh with both adoration and exasperation. There’s a touch of F. Scott Fitzgerald in this glamorous story… Halfway through, Groff leverages her story in a remarkable and transformative way … A vertiginous ride that will shake your confidence in what you think you know about your spouse — and yourself … Swelling with a contrapuntal symphony of passions, Fates and Furies is that daring novel that seems to reach too high — and then somehow, miraculously, exceeds its own ambitions.

Washington Post

Audacious and gorgeous…Deliciously voyeuristic but also wise on the simultaneous comforts and indignities of romantic partnership…In her previous work Groff proved herself a deft prose stylist, translating the familiar into the remarkable and transcendent. Fates and Furies further showcases this talent…In Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff has taken the struggles and pleasures of marriage and turned them into art, and in that artfulness she reminds us of the dangers and omissions that any storytelling requires.

Los Angeles Times

Absorbing and beautifully written, this is a riveting study of love, power and creativity.

Sunday Express

A playful and riveting read that questions whether love can be true when it's wrapped in falsehoods.

People magazine BOOK OF THE WEEK

Groff’s lush writing has a compelling awareness of what is unsaid.

The Times

[Fates and Furies is] an engrossing portrayal of a marriage and of life – or how a marriage impacts a life – and is packaged into a deeply poetic and engaging novel of two halves… With frequent asides and a love letter to literature, theatre and art in its pages, Lauren Groff has created something truly incredible… It’s a clever, thought-provoking novel that questions the very notion of how possible it is to ever know someone entirely, all told in such a beautifully crafted way that I’m sure many new readings will be found with each much-deserved re-read.

Culture Fly

[A] stunning achievement. The plotting is elegant, intricate and assured . . . it will give you much to savour.

Independent

Fates and Furies is a lyrical and, at times, astonishingly beautiful account of how little it is possible to know about those closest to us

Financial Times

Groff is an original writer, whose books are daringly nonconformist; she has a sharp gift for mimesis...Admirably, she writes inside and outside history at once, refusing to play safe by merely contouring the known…Fates and Furies refuses to be a conventional domestic novel…[The language is] thrillingly good – precise, lyrical, rich, both worldly and epically transfiguring…The prose is not only beautiful and vigorously alert; it insists on its own heroic registration, and lifts this story of a modern marriage out of the mundane. Even Lotto and Mathilde’s sex is grand and yet wittily figured.

James Wood, The New Yorker

Rich, lyrical and rewarding.

Paula Hawkins, author of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, Guardian (Books of the Year)

A searing exploration of how far a person will go for love, loyalty and revenge.

Time

Fates and Furies captures the vagaries of passion and marriage in ebullient prose.

Arifa Akbar, Independent (Best Fiction of 2015)

[An] edgy symphony.

Independent Magazine

My favourite book of 2015 was Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies ... I felt as though I could have gone on reading it forever.

Lindsey Kelk, author of ABOUT A GIRL

There are two sides to every story and the author delivers both of them with brilliant authenticity. A must read.

Town and Country (Christmas List)

An exploration of marriage that turns expectations upside down, all told through the snarkiest omniscient narrator since Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

Guardian (Readers' Books of the Year 2015)

My favourite book of 2015 was Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies (although I’m sure lots of people will pick this one!). I was given it by a friend and devoured it in two days. I felt as though I could have gone on reading it forever.

WH Smith (Books of the Year)

Fascinating...a joy to read.

SavidgeReads

Exhilaratingly complex and addictive to read…It is Mathilde – quiet, aloof, mysterious – who steals the story.Groff has drawn a woman so complex it seems that with every chapter a new layer is revealed, each as deliciously intriguing as the next…Fates and Furies, all 390 pages of it, had me captivated to the end…Lauren Groff has sculpted a genuinely authentic protagonist in Fates and Furies…The result is a compelling portrait of an unconventional marriage across two decades.

Stylist

Enough betrayal, vengeance and sex to read like one of the Greek tragedies

Observer

A lyrical and, at times, astonishingly beautiful account of how little it is possible to know about those closest to us.

Financial Times

A truly special novel ... if you haven't read her before, I'm delighted to take the credit for introducing you to one of your new favourite authors.

The Pool

A book to submit to and be knocked out by.

Meg Wolitzer

Rare and impressive… Groff has created a novel of extraordinary and genuine complexity…The word "ambitious" is often used as code for "overly ambitious", a signal that an author’s execution has fallen short. No such hidden message here. Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers – with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout.

New York Times

A dazzling novel ... At once intimate and sweeping, this is the story of a marriage as parallel myths-- flaring with passion and betrayal, with redemption and retribution, with the sort of heart-breaking, head-slapping secrets that make you want to seek out someone else who's read it. Lauren Groff is a powerful and graceful writer, one of the best of her generation.

Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins

A clear-the-ground triumph ... Groff captures the complicated ways love blesses, transforms and, yes, deceives us over many years…There’s a touch of F. Scott Fitzgerald in this glamorous story… Halfway through, Groff leverages her story in a remarkable and transformative way … A vertiginous ride that will shake your confidence in what you think you know about your spouse — and yourself.

Washington Post

Devastatingly good, with the most satisfying ending I've read in a long time. The writing is gorgeous, the plot twisting, and the characters are almost too real.

Sara Taylor, Guardian Books of the Year

Barack Obama’s favourite book of last year (and getting on for ours too), Fates and Furies is finally coming out in paperback. The tale of a marriage in parallel myths is a truly delicious story.

Observer Magazine – We Love…

[An] ingenious novel ... buttressed by real emotional power

Mail on Sunday

[An] ingenious novel…buttressed by real emotional power.

Mail on Sunday

A really powerful novel

President Obama

A truly brilliant book which I completely fell in love with.

Vogue

A forensic dissection of marriage, lyrically told.

Alexis Zegerman, Jewish Telegraph