A FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD ONE OF THE ATLANTIC’S GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS OF THE PAST 100 YEARS NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, TIME, THE SEATTLE TIMES, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, SLATE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, KIRKUS, AND MANY MORE “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.” —The New York Times Book Review (cover review) From the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Florida, Matrix, and the highly-anticipated The Vaster Wilds: an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.

NUBClub liked Groff before with Arcadia, but our appreciation went to a whole new level with Fates and Furies. We all found the book to be a powerful and profound look at how privilege shapes lives, and how love, support, and jealousy can intersect. What made the book so powerful was how true Groff was to the two characters' perspectives. She does an equally good job at looking at Lotto's precious and tortured relationship to art as to Mathilde's diligence and caution in approaching the harsh realities that Lotto can't see. We deeply respected the fact that Groff did not cheaply make Lotto a hack, and loved the moment when Mathilde realized that she did not have the same creative gift he had. At the same time, we felt that the book was held together by the believable strength of the couple's love, even though that love led to a deeply uneven power dynamic. Groff created a relationship that reflected a truth about creativity and dependence that we found utterly convincing, and even though we could see the naivete and bitterness running through the characters, we never stopped rooting for them, or ever doubted their feelings. Creating a couple that is so problematic and yet so compelling and sympathetic is not a small feat, and that Groff does so with such grace and power makes this one of the better things NUBClub has ever discussed.