Matrix by Lauren Groff

It is 1158 and Marie de France, seventeen and orphaned, arrives at an abbey where she has been sent to live. Matrix is the recounting of her life and that of the 12th century poet.  

She is a remarkable character and the reader marvels at the fact that she has been orphaned in France since the age of 12 and has managed her estate before being discovered. At that point she was sent to Westminister where she lived for 3 years. Believed to be the illegitimate half sister of King Henry II, she is totally enamored of Eleanor, the queen based on the real-life Eleanor of Aquitaine. She is sent to the abbey because she is most likely unmarriageable due to her largeness of frame and "no godly avocation."

Set in a remote part of the English countryside, the abbey is impoverished despite the large amount of land that it encompasses. Marie discovers this is because the tenants living on the abbey's land have not been paying rent. She makes an example of one family and after that the others fall in line. 

With Eleanor as a model of a powerful woman, the novel recounts how Marie brings order to the abbey and even the countryside. Having taken the veil, she uses her strong character and sense of right to lead the nuns as she works her way up the chains or command from subprioress to prioress to abbess. Groff begins most sections of the book with Marie's age so the reader knows how Marie is aging and becoming more powerful. 

Along the way new women come into the fold of the abbey and Marie's interaction with them and their stories add to the mature person into which Marie has developed and grown. Especially poignant is the tragedy of Avice de Chair, a novice who is sent to the abbey for having sex. She was or becomes pregnant and the description of her labor is heart-wrenching. 

Groff interweaves so many characters in and out of Marie's life and it serves to illustrate the power of a woman as well as one who is compassionate and ambitious at the same time. She makes improvements to the abbey and tends to those who are sick and troubled. The author does not shy away from descriptions and situations that may make a reader uneasy: the queer life in the abbey and the Christian tenet of women being inferior.

Matrix is a fascinating novel and demonstrates the command of prose that Groff possesses. Because of having COVID, I was not able to attend the Gables Book Club discussion of the book, but understood that I was probably the only one who liked it. It is worth a read to not only understand 12th  century life of women in a patriarchal society, but also to witness the development of a woman who can overcome life's strife with determination and ingenuity.