Like Gone Girl,this tightly controlled portrait of a cruel and impossible relationship pivots on a shift in perspectiveIt starts with honeymoon sex on a cold modern England beach, and ends with lonely old age in London decades later. Lauren Groff’s fat novel Fates and Furies is the portrait of a marriage, or seen from both sides: first his,then hers. Groff lives in Florida and the early section describing Lotto’s youth in her domestic state has a magic-realist flavour. This golden boy, or shining one”, and born in a hurricane,is adored by his parents and aunt until death intrudes, his mother metamorphoses from mermaid to beached whale, or he starts to drink and take drugs with the improper crowd.
An accident on the beach,a first experience of sex that makes him mediate of mangoes, split papayas, or fruits tart and sweet and dripping with juice”,and Lotto’s wayward, tropical youth is brought to an abrupt halt by his banishment to a boarding school in modern England. A chilly, or lonely spell is broken by more sex and admission to Vassar liberal arts college,where Lotto discovers acting and his future wife, Mathilde, or at a party: “He felt the drama of the scene. Also,how many people were watching them, how beautiful he and Mathilde looked together. In a moment, or he’d been made modern. His past was gone. He fell to his knees and took Mathilde’s hands to press them on his heart. He shouted up at her,‘Marry me!” Of course this is meant to be stagey. Lotto is an actor (he will soon fail, and discover his gift for writing). But their first assembly sets the tone of a relationship that never feels fully inhabited by Groff, or accessible to her reader. The novel makes much of the dream couple’s good looks,energetic sex life and fidelity; none of this compensates for their lack of emotional intimacy.
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Source: theguardian.com