An unexpected and engrossing read. Amazing how Groff portrays a whole world and life in very few pages. ( )

Lauren Groff presents a readable, believable, fascinating story of life in 12th century England. It tells us a fictionalized life of Marie de France, a poet, who in this novel becomes the Matrix, or Mother, of a poor abby of nuns. She despairs at first of her fate, then becomes a force to be reckoned with.

The dust jacket says Matrix is "alive to the sacred and the profane," and that is certainly my experience of this extraordinary novel. ( )

A delightful and spiritual wander in the cloisters of a 12th century convent. Groff brings the world to life, pulls us in to the life of her main character, Marie, shows us the beauty and the hardship of the times.
Her writing is incandescent and, occasionally, over the top. This is easily forgiven because reading the book is much like enjoying a layered French pastry-flavours blend and are separate in turns, the taste can overwhelm but is then leavened…

I felt a bit at a loss at times. Marie is like a superhero, managing everything from crusades to construction with ease. I’d like to have seen some of her learning, figure out how she set up spies and informers to keep the Abbey safe, how she persuaded people to pay and support her. Instead she just strides places and rules with her height and “ugly” face… Apparently the real Marie was an accomplished poet; this is barely mentioned here.

It was also hard to care for the characters- they are often described like lush paintings- rich but ultimately flat. Still, I couldn’t put the book down, excited to see what the nuns would do next. There are threats mentioned but they don’t seem real. In fact the entire book reads like an immersion into the senses and taken as that it is quite enjoyable. The writing is splendid. ( )

2.5 - I really wanted to love this book- seems I’ve read a lot of these disappointments lately. ( )

I didn't get very far into this before I gave up.

The curse of being a specialist in any topic is that it becomes very hard to enjoy media about that topic. In this case, I studied medieval history in graduate school and found myself yelling at this book too much to enjoy it. A few particular things that bothered me: when Marie arrives at the abbey, they offer to give her a bath, and she tries to refuse because she just bathed a few weeks ago. Medieval people bathed all the time. A lot. They had bath-houses. They loved baths. They would never turn down a bath. Marie is also surprised to learn what the life of a nun is like, and how often they pray. This would have been very common knowledge to all medieval people, especially someone who is literate.

If a book is good enough, I can put aside my critiques and enjoy it, but I wasn't finding much that was redeeming in this book. Marie is not particularly likeable, at least in the opening chapters, and I didn't find anything compelling in her story.