Matrix by Lauren Groff

Riverhead Books, 272 pages, $28 (c2021)

The subtitle of “Matrix” should be, “No, not the movie and no, nothing to do with math or rocks.” I will also add, no, this is not a mystery.

I loved this book. I think I’m allowed to love books that aren’t mysteries. (I’ll check my contract.*)

The story is set in the 1100s in England. It’s about an indomitable girl who grows up in France and becomes a powerful abbess in England. It’s sad sometimes. It’s lyrical always.

Marie de France is tall, sturdy, and unlikely to have songs written about her beauty. She is related to Eleanor of Aquitaine by way of being the illegitimate child of the old king. She is also said to be from the line of the fairy Mélusine.

Here’s a description of Marie when she arrived at Eleanor’s court, an orphan too young to hold on to her mother’s estate in France:

… Marie appalled everyone with her ravenousness, her rawness, her gauche bigboned body; where most privileges accorded her royal blood she lost due to the faults of her person.

Matrix is the mother. Marie is the matrix of the abbey.

* Just joking.