Review:
Matrix, by Lauren Groff
| Publisher: |
Riverhead Books |
| Copyright: |
2021 |
| ISBN: |
0-698-40513-7 |
| Format: |
Kindle |
| Pages: |
260 |
Marie is a royal bastardess, a product of rape no less, and entirely out
of place in the court in Westminster, where she landed after being kicked
off her mother's farm. She had run the farm since her mother's untimely
death, but there was no way that her relatives would let her inherit. In
court, Marie is too tall, too ugly, and too strange, raised by women who
were said to carry the blood of the fairy M lusine. Eleanor of
Aquitaine's solution to her unwanted house guest is a Papal commission.
Marie is to become the prioress of an abbey.
I am occasionally unpleasantly reminded of why I don't read very much
literary fiction. It's immensely frustrating to read a book in which the
author cares about entirely different things than the reader, and where
the story beats all land wrong.
This is literary historical fiction set in the 12th century. Marie is
Marie de France,
author of the lais about courtly love that are famous primarily due to
their position as early sources for the legends of King Arthur. The lais
are written on-screen very early in this book, but they disappear without
any meaningful impact on the story.
Matrix is, instead, about
Shaftesbury Abbey and what it becomes during Marie's time as prioress and
then abbess, following the theory that Marie de France was
Mary of
Shaftesbury.
What I thought I was getting in this book, from numerous reviews and
recommendations, was a story of unexpected competence: how a wild,
unwanted child of seventeen lands at a dilapidated and starving abbey,
entirely against her will, and then over the next sixty years transforms
it into one of the richest abbeys in England. This does happen in this
book, but Groff doesn't seem to care about the details of that
transformation
at all.
Instead,
Matrix takes the mimetic fiction approach of detailed and
precise description of a few characters, with all of their flaws and
complexities, and with all of the narrative's attention turned to how they
are feeling and what they are seeing. It is also deeply, fully committed
to a Great Man (or in this case a Great Woman) view of history.
Marie is singular. The narrative follows her alone, she makes all the
significant decisions, and the development of the abbey is determined by
her apparently mystical visions. (In typical mimetic fashion, these are
presented as real to her, and the novel takes no position on whether that
reality is objective.) She builds spy networks, maneuvers through local
and church politics, and runs the abbey like her personal kingdom. The
tiny amount of this that is necessarily done by other people is attributed
to Marie's ability to judge character. Other people's motives are simply
steamrolled over and have no effect.
Maddeningly, essentially all of this happens off-screen, and Groff is
completely uninterested in the details of how any of it is accomplished.
Marie decides to do something, the narrative skips forward a year, and it
has happened. She decides to build something, and then it's built. She
decides to collect the rents she's due, the novel gestures vaguely at how
she's intimidating, and then everyone is happily paying up. She builds
spy networks; who cares how? She maneuvers through crises of local and
church politics that are vaguely alluded to, through techniques that are
apparently too uninteresting to bother the reader with.
Instead, the narrative focuses on two things: her deeply dysfunctional,
parasocial relationship with Eleanor, and her tyrannical relationship with
the other nuns. I suspect that Groff would strongly disagree with my
characterization of both of those narratives, and that's the other half of
my problem with this book.
Marie is obsessed with and in love with Eleanor, a completely impossible
love to even talk about, and therefore turns to courtly love from afar as
a model into which she can fit her feelings. While this is the setup for
a tragedy, it's a good idea for a story. But what undermined it for me is
that Marie's obsession seems to be largely physical (she constantly dwells
on Eleanor's beauty), and Eleanor is absolutely horrible to her in every
way: condescending, contemptuous, dismissive, and completely uninterested.
This does change a bit over the course of the book, but not enough to
justify the crush that Marie maintains for this awful person through her
entire life.
And Eleanor is the only person in the book who Marie treats like an equal.
Everyone else is a subordinate, a daughter, a charge, a servant, or a
worker. The nuns of the abbey prosper under her rule, so Marie has ample
reason to justify this to herself, but no one else's opinions or beliefs
matter to her in any significant way. The closest anyone can come to
friendship is to be reliably obedient, perhaps after some initial
objections that Marie overrules. Despite some quite good characterization
of the other nuns, none of the other characters get to
do anything.
There is no delight in teamwork, sense of healthy community, or
collaborative problem-solving. It's just all Marie, all the time,
imposing her vision on the world both living and non-living through sheer
force of will.
This just isn't entertaining, at least for me. The writing might be
beautiful, the descriptions detailed and effective, and the research
clearly extensive, but I read books primarily for characters, I read
characters primarily for their relationships, and these relationships are
deeply, horribly unhealthy. They are not, to be clear, unrealistic
(although I do think there's way too much chosen one in Marie and way too
many problems that disappear off-camera); there are certainly people in
the world with dysfunctional obsessive relationships, and there are
charismatic people who overwhelm everyone around them. This is just not
what I want to read about.
You might think, with all I've said above, that I'm spoiling a lot of the
book, but weirdly I don't think I am. Every pattern I mention above is
well-established early in the novel. About the only thing that I'm
spoiling is the hope that any of it is somehow going to change, a hope
that I clung to for rather too long.
This is a great setup for a book, and I wish it were written by a fantasy
author instead of a literary author. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on
literary fiction here, but I feel like fantasy authors are more likely to
write for readers who want to see the growth sequence. If someone is
going to change the world, I want to see
how they changed the
world. The mode of fantasy writing tends to think that what people do
(and how they do it) is as interesting or more interesting than what they
feel or what they perceive.
If this idea, with the exact same level of (minor) mysticism and historic
realism, without added magic, were written by, say, Guy Gavriel Kay or
Nicola Griffith, it would be a far different and, in my opinion, a much
better book. In fact,
Hild is
part of this book written by Nicola Griffith, and it
is a much
better book.
I have seen enough people rave about this book to know that this is a
personal reaction that is not going to be shared by everyone, or possibly
even most people. My theory is that this is due to the different reading
protocols between literary fiction readers and fantasy readers. I put
myself in the latter camp; if you prefer literary fiction, you may like
this much better (and also I'm not sure you'll find my book reviews
useful). I may be wrong, though; maybe there are fantasy readers who
would like this. I will say that the sense of place is very strong and
the writing has all the expected literary strengths of descriptiveness and
rhythm.
But, sadly, this was not at all my thing, and I'm irritated that I wasted
time on it.
Rating: 4 out of 10
A recent development is cheap Gallium Nitride based power supplies that provide better efficiency in a smaller space than other technologies. Kogan recently had a special on such devices so I decided to try them out with my new Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 5 [1]. Google searches for power supplies for that Thinkpad included results for 30W PSUs which implies that any 30W USB-C PSU should work.
I bought a 30W charger for $10 that can supply 15V/2A or 20V/1.5A on a single USB-C port or 15W on the USB-C port and 15W on the USB-2 port at the same time and expected it to work as a laptop charger. Unfortunately it didn t, I don t know whether the adverts for 30W Thinkpad PSUs were false or whether the claim of the GaN charger I bought being 30W was false, all I know is that the KDE power applet said that the PSU couldn t supply enough power.
I then bought a 68W charger for $28 that can supply 20.0V/3.0A on a single USB-C port if the USB-2 port isn t used and 50W on the USB-C port if the USB-2 port is also being used. This worked well which wasn t a great surprise as I had previously run the laptop on 45W PSUs. If I connect a phone to the USB-2 port while the laptop is being charged then the laptop will be briefly cut off, presumably the voltage and current are being renegotiated when that happens.
As you can see the 68W charger is significantly larger than the 30W charger, but still small enough to easily fit in a jacket pocket and smaller than a regular laptop charger. One of my uses for this will be to put it in a jacket pocket when I have my laptop in another pocket. Another use will be for charging in my car as the cables from the inverter to convert 12VDC to 240VAC takes enough space. I will probably get a ~50W USB-PD charger that connects to a car cigarette lighter socket when a GaN version of such a charger becomes available.
As I mentioned 
Over the weekend I released a new version of onak, my OpenPGP compatible keyserver. At 2 years since the 
I m trying to replace my old OpenPGP key with a new one. The old key wasn t compromised or lost or anything
bad. Is still valid, but I plan to get rid of it soon. It was created in 2013.
The new key id fingerprint is: 
My impression of that city from couple of visits at that point in time where they were still more tongas (horse-ridden carriages), an occasional two wheelers and not many three wheelers. Although, it was one of the more turbulent times as lot of agitation for worker rights were happening around that time and a lot of 
So the last three stories I found the most intriguing.
The first one is titled Man on the Beach. Apparently, a gentleman goes to one of the beaches, a sort of lonely beach, hails a taxi and while returning suddenly dies. The Taxi driver showing good presence of mind takes it to hospital where the gentleman is declared dead on arrival. Unlike in India, he doesn t run away but goes to the cafeteria and waits there for the cops to arrive and take his statement. Now the man is in his early 40s and looks to be fit. Upon searching his pockets he is found to relatively well-off and later it turns out he owns a couple of shops. So then here are the questions ?
What was the man doing on a beach, in summer that beach is somewhat popular but other times not so much, so what was he doing there?
How did he die, was it a simple heart attack or something more? If he had been drugged or something then when and how?
These and more questions can be answered by reading the story Man on the Beach .
2. The death of a photographer Apparently, Kurt lives in a small town where almost all the residents have been served one way or the other by the town photographer. The man was polite and had worked for something like 40 odd years before he is killed/murdered. Apparently, he is murdered late at night. So here come the questions
a. The shop doesn t even stock any cameras and his cash box has cash. Further investigation reveals it is approximate to his average takeout for the day. So if it s not for cash, then what is the motive ?
b. The body was discovered by his cleaning staff who has worked for almost 20 years, 3 days a week. She has her own set of keys to come and clean the office? Did she give the keys to someone, if yes why?
c. Even after investigation, there is no scandal about the man, no other woman or any vices like gambling etc. that could rack up loans. Also, nobody seems to know him and yet take him for granted till he dies. The whole thing appears to be quite strange. Again, the answers lie in the book.
3. The Pyramid Kurt is sleeping one night when the telephone rings. The scene starts with a Piper Cherokee, a single piston aircraft flying low and dropping something somewhere or getting somebody from/on the coast of Sweden. It turns and after a while crashes. Kurt is called to investigate it. Turns out, the plane was supposed to be destroyed. On crash, both the pilot and the passenger are into pieces so only dental records can prove who they are. Same day or a day or two later, two seemingly ordinary somewhat elderly women, spinsters, by all accounts, live above the shop where they sell buttons and all kinds of sewing needs of the town. They seem middle-class. Later the charred bodies of the two sisters are found :(. So here come the questions
a.Did the plane drop something or pick something somebody up ? The Cherokee is a small plane so any plane field or something it could have landed up or if a place was somehow marked then could be dropped or picked up without actually landing.
b. The firefighter suspects arson started at multiple places with the use of petrol? The question is why would somebody wanna do that? The sisters don t seem to be wealthy and practically everybody has bought stuff from them. They weren t popular but weren t also unpopular.
c. Are the two crimes connected or unconnected? If connected, then how?
d. Most important question, why the title Pyramid is given to the story. Why does the author share the name Pyramid. Does he mean the same or the original thing? He could have named it triangle. Again, answers to all the above can be found in the book.
One thing I also became very aware of during reading the book that it is difficult to understand people s behavior and what they do. And this is without even any criminality involved in. Let s say for e.g. I die in some mysterious circumstances, the possibility of the police finding my actions in last days would be limited and this is when I have hearing loss. And this probably is more to do with how our minds are wired. And most people I know are much more privacy conscious/aware than I am.
