Lauren Groff is another one of my favourite writers whose novels I always look forward to reading. The Monsters of Templeton is one of my favourite books that I have reread a few times. Matrix is Groff’s latest novel, released at the beginning of September. It is unlike anything Groff has written before. Her previous novels have more contemporary settings, but Matrix is set in an abbey in the 12th century and is about a young woman who is forced to become a nun. It reads like a beautifully composed dream, or perhaps a prophecy, and I found it completely fascinating and engrossing.

Matrix is based on the real-life historical figure of Marie de France, who was possibly a French-born poet who lived in England during the 12th century. That is all that is known about Marie de France, besides her existing works, which gives Groff plenty of artistic license with her fictional Marie de France. In Groff’s novel, Marie is the illegitimate relation of Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom Marie is infatuated with. Marie is unusually tall for a woman of her time, unattractive and ungainly. There are not a lot of options for woman in the 12th century, and since she is not likely to make a good marriage or be useful at court, Eleanor sends Marie to an abbey where she will become prioress.

Marie does not want to leave Eleanor and be stuck in an abbey. The abbey itself is impoverished and ill-managed by the current abbess; the nuns are starving and dying. Marie writes poetry and sends it off to court, hoping that Eleanor will read her poems and change her mind and send for Marie, but this does not happen. Resigned to her fate, Marie takes over management of the abbey and under her care it starts to flourish and become rich. The nuns recover and start to grow in number. Then Marie starts having her prophecies, the first of which is that she and the other nuns must construct a great labyrinth to protect the abbey from men and other outside influences. Marie has many prophecies over the years, which cause division in the nuns.

Matrix is very much a character study of Marie from an ungainly 17-year-old girl to a formidable abbess at the prime of her life to her old age, as well as a study of relationships between women, including the familial and the sexual. The novel is mostly set at the abbey and does not stray very far beyond its wall, or rather the labyrinth that hides it. This community of 12th century women, comprising of the nuns, the novices, the postulants, the oblates, and the servants, shows that not much has changed for women over the centuries. Marie’s intelligence and her management of the abbey makes her enemies outside the abbey, especially of men who just cannot seem to appreciate a smart woman; they call her a witch. Marie even has detractors within the abbey: nuns who are fed up with spending the abbey’s funds on her prophecies or who do not like the decisions she makes or who do not like her defying the gender roles of the time. Even in this community that is supposed to be devoted to God and doing good, there is the usual women pitting themselves against each other, and the usual women who subscribe to the roles imposed on them by men.

Whether or not you have read any of Groff’s novels before, I do not think Matrix is for everyone. Marie is a flawed character and not entirely likeable; she does not always make the best decisions. The setting may be too insular for some people’s tastes. If Matrix does not sound like your cup of tea, and if you have not read anything by Lauren Groff before, then I highly recommend giving The Monsters of Templeton a try. It is a more interesting and palatable novel.