"Matrix" by Lauren Groff

Matrix is an odd book stylistically, even though its material seems solid fodder for contemporary fiction. The novel follows Marie, a young noblewoman sent by the queen to become prioress over a ruined and starving abbey. Through Marie's strength of will and ambition, she grows the abbey into immense prosperity and wealth, defying the patriarchal standards of the day (even, at the end, delivering communion and confession as a priest would). The story is very loosely inspired by the real Marie de France, a 12th century writer and poet about whom little is known. 

But though this is sufficiently juicy backstory for a novel that works to reclaim historical women into feminist idols, Groff resists such a narrative. Instead, she's created a dreamy, hazy novel about love and ambition, the body and the soul. The novel covers most of Marie's life, from her arrival at the abbey at age 17 until her death in her seventies. And while Marie is clearly the protagonist, much time is spent on Queen Eleanor (whom Marie is deeply infatuated with), other nuns, and the abbey and its lands. Marie's successes do not come off as stunning victories, but rather the result of wisdom, planning, and team-work. Her failures, likewise, arise from luck as well as foolhardiness.

Thus perhaps what's most surprising about the novel is that Marie's incredible ambition and success, unheard of for most 12th century women, is attributed to many things, the least of which is girl power. Towards the end of the novel, Marie's former maid, Cecily, recounts the many opportunities--including Marie's unattractiveness--that allowed her the success she had. Such opportunities don't diminish Marie's successes, but they do contextualize them. And her successes do not come without real costs to the land, the nuns, and the other women who serve under her. 

In the end, it's an unusual novel, one that sometimes annoyed me (I really wanted Marie to stop mooning over Eleanor) but that nonetheless kept me reading.