A review by burritapal_1
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

This book is split in two. The first part is told from Lotto's point of view: fate. The second part is from mathilde's point of view, where we find out what a nasty creepy-ass character she is: furies. I will say it took a major Talent to write a book with this kind of organization and planning and downright creativity in writing some of the nastiest characters I've ever read of. But I just couldn't stomach it.

When Lancelot goes to an artist Community for a 3 week collaboration with the creator of an opera that he fell in love with, he is put on hold while Leo Sell finishes up some work he had committed to previously. "Lotto" gets bored in his cabin, so this is what he does:

".. he wanted to be working. In late afternoon, he pulled on his boots and his Barbour jacket and went out for a walk in the woods. The Chill on his face turned itself inside out and he grew warm. Hear begat lustiness and lustiness carried him to a moss-covered rock, a deep cold beneath the warm green velvety nap. With his pants to his knees, engaged in heavy self-fondle. Thoughts of Mathilda [Aurelie] had become amagnetic, rebounding off her, spinning outward, ending up hopelessly Tangled in thoughts of an Asian nymphet cooing at him in a schoolgirls kilt, as fantasies tended to. Tree branches gray slats above and moving polka dots of crows. Frantic motions in the groinal area until the inevitable upward Spin and the slick in the palm." 

This character is vile, disgusting. Who the fuck sits out in the woods and Jacks themselves off? "Frantic morions in the groinal area." Ugh.

When he takes too long in his artist colony, Mathilda gets mad at him. She actually took off to Thailand or some place like that, and was contemplating picking up a one-night stand. When Lancelot gets back, he came in the house and she didn't look at him. But then she saw him: 

"she stood so fast her chair tumbled backward and she came to him with her hands outspread, her face bursting open, and then he pressed his face into her hair to smell it. The Earth was stuck, rotating, in his throat. And then her strong and bony body was against his, her scent in his nose, the taste of her earlobe in his mouth. She pulled back a span and looked at him ferociously and kicked the kitchen door shut with her foot. When he tried to speak, she pressed her hand hard over his mouth so he couldn't and she led him upstairs in absolute silence and had her way with him so roughly that when he woke the next day he had plum-colored bruises on the bones of his hip and fingernail cuts on his sides, which he pressed in the bathroom, hungry for the pain."

This is just fucking stupid. These characters are so loathsome. I get it; is totally fucked up in the head from her parents kicking her out when she was 4, because she threw her little brother down the stairs, but . . . never mind I just can't stand the characters in this book.

Mathilde gets Lotto a dog when he's depressed on opiates, drinking too much, laying around all day, because he broke his leg in a spiral fracture when somebody pushed him off the stair from a plane. The little dog falls in love with Lotto, and Lotto names him god. This is how mathilde pays back this little dog who only wanted love and was loyal:

"she was alone for an afternoon. she came downstairs to find that god had chewed the kitchen rug, had left a mess of urine on the floor, was looking at her with a bellicose light in her eye. Mathilde showered, put on a white dress, let her hair drip the fabric wet. SHe put the dog into her crate, her toys and food in a plastic bag, put it all in the car. The dog screamed in the back, then settled. 

She stood outside the General Store in town until she saw a family she vaguely knew. The father was the man they'd hired to plow their driveway in winter, with a steer Rustler's face, maybe a little slow. The mother was the dental receptionist, a big woman with small ivory teeth. The children had gorgeous Fawn eyes. Mathilde knelt to their level, and said, 'I want to give you my dog.' "

Yeah. That's this fucking character. Did the author just want to see if she could make the most unlovable characters ever? If so, she deserves an award for that.

Lotto's friend Chollie from his teenage years has it in for Mathilde. For years he hid his hatred of her, but one day The Mask comes off. He tells her that he had seen Mathilde with her old sugar daddy.

" 'Ha. Anyway, you came out in this awful outfit. See-through shirt, miniskirt like a band-aid. And you're with this weird flabby-faced man who put his hands up your skirt. And I think, huh. My buddy Lotto is the best person on the planet. Loyal as shit and kind, and let me crash with him and is more my family than my family, just brilliant, this real fucking genius, though I don't really think anybody knew that back then, but there was something in him. Charisma, gentleness, a kind of acceptance of people for who they are. That's rare, you know?.. " 

so, Mathilde had told Lotto that she was a virgin when he married her. He thought this was true, because the first time they had sex, he had blood all over his junk. But later on we find out that she was just having her period. So, Chollie plots to get even with mathilde.

"he waited, but she wouldn't say anything, so he said, 'so I thought I'd sit back and wait my time and then drive the knife in when nobody was expecting it.'

'24 years. And he died before you could,' she said softly. 'Too bad. Tragedy.' 

'wrong,' he said."

Yes, that's right, Chollie told Lotto what he had seen. Lotto always thought of his wife as some kind of wood-nymph, a tall, bony, sex-obsessed woman that was true to him and was ready for sex at the drop of a pin.

"he saw the understanding and laughed, and said, 'my dick's on the table, baby. I play a long game.'

'why?' She said. 

'you took him,' he said, and his voice came out too raspy, too quick. He shuffled his glasses on his nose, folded his hands. 'he was the only person I had and you took him. But also you're a bad person who never deserved him.'

'I meant,' she said, 'why now? Why not 10 years ago? Why not 20 years from now?'

'we both know how much our old friend loved vagina. Any and all. And frankly, dear, I always knew that someday yours would be getting pretty old. All flabby and loose. Menopause setting in soon. And poor Lotto had always longed for a kid of his own. With you out of the way, he could have had the kid he wanted. And we all wanted to give him what he wanted. Didn't we?' " 

So Mathilde plots to get even with chollie. Oh, the fun of these characters. The way the author layers and reveals the nasty traits.

"By the end of Fates And Furies, we have seen both sides, maybe even all sides of Lotto and Mathilde. We've seen the man and the woman behind the man, borne witness to terrible truths brought forth for spite's sake and watched a dark turn to furious vengeance when Mathilde (suddenly, but not at all uncharacteristically) goes full Lady MacBeth and scorches the very earth. We know their secrets. We know their fears. We know what they did behind closed doors (and ones just slightly ajar). And yet still we are left with one lingering question.

Do we close the book believing in the purity and genius of the fated son,This or with nothing but a cold and lingering fury?"--Jason Sheehan