It is not often that I find myself losing sleep over characters in a book. Weeks after reading Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, Lotto and Mathilde’s story is prominent in my mind, and with Lauren’s upcoming visit to Lemuria, I’d like to share why this book was so powerful. When I talk about literally losing sleep, I mean that I was reading this book at 3  in the morning and was reading with my hand over my mouth because I couldn’t believe what was happening. Or maybe I could believe it. I’ll let you decide.

The title, Fates and Furies, reveals a lot about the book. In Crowell’s Handbook of Classical Mythology, the Fates are “Divine beings who determined the course of events in human lives.” They have been personified in many ways, but “as often as the Fates were associated with the end of life, they were active at its beginning.” The Fates are three women Clotho (the spinner), Lachesis (allotter) and Atropos (unturnable), who, from the very moment of birth determine the thread of one’s life, and when to cut it.

The first section of Fates and Furies, labeled, simply, “Fates,” is told from Lotto’s perspective. We see that he is destined for “greatness” from his birth. While the story is told in omniscient third person, there are interjections in brackets, as if an unknown party is relaying information the audience, or reader, should know, but that could not otherwise be revealed through the characters.

For example:

Lotto loved the story. He’d been born, he’d always say, in the calm eye of the hurricane. [From the first, a wicked sense of timing.]

So…who is the narrator who decides to interject himself or herself into the story? Much like a Greek chorus, this narrator frequently divulges what the character truly thinks or feels contrary to their actions, or extemporaneous information—i.e., that it was a wicked sense of timing. Perhaps, it would not be remiss to say that these speakers are the Fates, and later, the Furies. The Fates could also be interpreted as the women in Lotto’s life—his mother, his wife, and perhaps his sister. Who destined him for greatness by naming him Lancelot? His mother. Who furthered his play-writing career by being the muse and behind the scenes editor of his plays? Mathilde. Perhaps, even, there is a Fate that cuts his life short, but you’ll have to read it to see if that’s the case.

Fates and Furies is the story of a marriage. “Most operas, it is true, are about marriage. Few marriages could be called operatic.” Lotto and Mathilde, two opposites, whose marriage, as it unfolds, is a Greek drama. It is both tragedy and comedy. Lotto’s English teacher asks the students the difference between tragedy and comedy. One student replies that it is the difference of solemnity vs humor.

“False,” Denton Thrasher said. “A trick. There’s no difference. It’s a question of perspective. Storytelling is landscape, and tragedy is comedy is drama. It simply depends on how you frame what you’re seeing.”

This statement encapsulates the entirety of Fates and Furies. In a book that concerns itself with a failed Shakespearean actor who turns to play-writing, the book can also be read as a play.

Comedies, in the Shakespearean sense, often concern themselves with the ability of the characters to triumph over the chaos of life, ultimately ending in a marriage, representing the renewal of life and of second chances. From the Greek, komas (meaning “the party”) and oide (meaning “the song”) comes, kōmōidía, or the song of the party, of the reveling. At the beginning of Fates and Furies, there is much reveling, and one party begins where the other ends, often without much distinction, so the reader must be observant to know that a new party has started, and learn the characters that orbit Lotto and Mathilde in constant rotation. As the story continues, however, these revolving characters are whittled down to a main five: Chollie, Mathilde, Lotto, Antoinette, and another later character. So begins the switch to tragedy.

In tragedy, a character is doomed to an unhappy end, usually by fate, and the hero suffers from hubris or excessive pride, ultimately leading to his downfall. Tragedy is comedy is drama. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, (a comedy where lovers are mixed up), there is a play within a play, the love story of Pyramus and Thisbe, which, incidentally is a tragedy. Pyramus and Thisbe cannot be together because of a family rivalry (an early Greek incarnation of Romeo and Juliet). They agree to meet under a mulberry tree. When Thisbe arrives first, she sees a lion whose mouth is bloodied from a recent kill, and in her hurry to runaway, she drops her veil. Pyramus enters the scene, thinks his beloved has been killed, and, rather than be without her, chooses to impale himself upon his sword. In A Midsummer’s Night Dream (5.1.261-270) the actor playing Pyramus cries:

What dreadful dole is here!

Eyes, do you see?

How can it be?

O dainty duck! O dear!

Thy mantle good,

What, stained with blood?

Approach, ye Furies fell!

O Fates, come, come,

Cut thread and thrum.

Quail, crush, conclude, and quell!

And while in the Greek play the lion has merely killed Thisbe, Shakespeare’s Pyramus goes on angrily to say that the lion hath “deflowered” his love.

And finally we enter the last section of the book, “Furies.” Also found in Crowell’s Handbook of Classical Mythology, the Erinyes, or Furies, as they were known to the Romans, were “female spirits who punished offenders against blood kin.” Crowell continues, “Whatever their precise origin, they reflect a very ancient Greek belief in a divine mechanism of retributive justice.” What we see in the last quarter of the book is Mathilde enacting revenge for past injustices—she is not just furious, she is fury.

I think that Lotto and Mathilde have entered the cannon of love stories all on their own, but it is also my opinion that they are Shakespeare’s Pyramus and Thisbe re-imagined. Tragedy is comedy is drama. From which lens are we seeing the drama unfold, and which one presents tragedy versus comedy? Lotto’s? Mathilde’s? The Greek chorus? Or the reader’s? Don’t miss this amazing, multi-layered story, and a chance to hear Lauren speak at Lemuria this Tuesday night at 5:00 in our main store!