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Seventeen-year-old Marie, too wild for courtly life, is thrown to the dogs one winter morning, expelled from the royal court to become the prioress of an abbey. Marie is strange - tall, a giantess, her elbows and knees stick out, ungainly.
At first taken aback by life at the abbey, Marie finds purpose and passion among her mercurial sisters. Yet she deeply misses her secret lover Cecily and queen Eleanor.
Born last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, women who flew across the countryside with their sword fighting and dagger work, Marie decides to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. She will bring herself, and her sisters, out of the darkness, into riches and power.
MATRIX is a bold vision of female love, devotion and desire from one of the most adventurous writers at work today.
Author: Lauren Groff
Paperback Published 20 September 2022 272 pages
Originally published in trade paperback 14 September 2021
Read and Recommended by Hendri:
"This instant New York Times best-selling novel takes us on the journey of seventeen-year-old Marie de France to an impoverished abbey in England. Together with the other sisters, Marie explores and invents what the future can mean for women in the 12th century. Living in an impoverished monastery, with relentless courage, Marie rebuilds the abbey, forges erotic and emotional sisterhood with other sisters, and soon reinvents herself. Previously deemed too crude for marriage and too manly for her physical features, Marie challenge what 'women' and 'kinship' should be in the 12th century. Together with the other sisters, Marie discovers a new way of living and invent a new meaning of family and kinship. Perfect for queer readers, despite its historical setting, Matrix reverberates across our contemporary queer life: how to 'queer' kinship and read 'history' in a queer way to make the present 'queer'!"
'Luminous, divine, her masterpiece' -DAISY JOHNSON
'An audacious piece of storytelling, full of passion, wisdom and magic' -SARAH WATERS
'Lauren Groff is a virtuoso' -EMILY ST JOHN MANDEL
'How mesmerising can twelfth century nuns be, even in the hands of Lauren Groff? I had barely started it before I was bloody well blaspheming with delight. Matrix is a gorgeous, sensual, addictive read' -SARA COLLINS