Zadie Smith wrote somewhere that with a lot of novels, the first few pages or so, maybe the first chapter, is kind of fussed over by the author, as s/he tries to find the shape of what the book is going to be, a quality that may be just as much further reinforced as smoothed out in the editing and rewriting process. It kind of felt like there was a bit of that with the first chapter of Fates and Furies, which sets up a deliberately self-conscious depiction of Lotto and Mathilde, young, beautiful and in love, on a beach, married in secret just that morning; I remember reading the first few pages in Readings a couple of years ago and being struck by the visuals and the language but not being especially tempted to keep reading. And, if anything, that impression was reinforced once the novel started really pulling - and I began really feeling it - from the second chapter, which races at just the right pace through Lotto's childhood, charmed and at the same time marked by trauma and loss, and then into the third with its succession of parties pulling still further forward through time (then chapter four: same trick, with the plays), and by then I was convinced.
But the trick - and it's not a cheap one, but rather one of real literary art - is the way that the building succession of events and perspectives continually sheds retrospective light on the earlier sections, about the central marriage and the layers to both the people in it, and many of those around them. It's there writ large in the two main sections, 'Fates' and 'Furies', and in so many smaller ways (it's not actually a small thing, but in a less good novel it could have been overlooked: I was very glad when the book returned to Gwennie and gave us her perspective near the end - retrospectively validating the Lotto-centric narrative speed with which she was disposed of, off-stage no less, in the earlier section). And it's also not overly cute in how it lays out those perspectives and voices; it matters, for example, that we see some of 'Fates' from Mathilde's - and others' - perspectives, rather than being locked entirely into the narrative that's been written for Lotto, so that the transition isn't any kind of cheap 'twist'.
It's funny. Many of the books I most admire, and which most speak to me, are those that stick fiercely to the interiority of the main character, often in first person: I've followed Murakami, Siri Hustvedt, Scarlett Thomas, Rivka Galchen, Rebecca Lee (collectively, most of my current favourites) far down those roads. But some of those that have most moved me are deliberately staged with a multitude of voices, giving the reader direct access to the inner lives of even some of the more minor characters. (Here, some of the characters, like Antoinette and Sallie, could so easily have existed only in relation to Lotto in particular, but Groff insists upon their personhood.)
I did feel that the tautness of the novel was lost a bit in the 'Furies' section. It gets a bit choppy at times, without that same sense of there being a thread tugging ever forward (of story) that marks 'Fates'. I expect that to some extent that's deliberate (since part of the point is that Mathilde's story is much more discontinuous and less apparently fated than Lotto's) and partly flows from Groff's determined avoidance of some of the simpler, more black and white choices she could have made in depicting Mathilde's choices and what they've meant for her happiness, but still, some of the air went out of the sails for me over the back end. Nonetheless, this is a quite wonderful novel, which has touched me while making me think about how we come to be who we are, and live the lives we do.
(I came to it after reading Groff's wonderful story "Ghosts and Empties" in a New Yorker back issue.)
But the trick - and it's not a cheap one, but rather one of real literary art - is the way that the building succession of events and perspectives continually sheds retrospective light on the earlier sections, about the central marriage and the layers to both the people in it, and many of those around them. It's there writ large in the two main sections, 'Fates' and 'Furies', and in so many smaller ways (it's not actually a small thing, but in a less good novel it could have been overlooked: I was very glad when the book returned to Gwennie and gave us her perspective near the end - retrospectively validating the Lotto-centric narrative speed with which she was disposed of, off-stage no less, in the earlier section). And it's also not overly cute in how it lays out those perspectives and voices; it matters, for example, that we see some of 'Fates' from Mathilde's - and others' - perspectives, rather than being locked entirely into the narrative that's been written for Lotto, so that the transition isn't any kind of cheap 'twist'.
It's funny. Many of the books I most admire, and which most speak to me, are those that stick fiercely to the interiority of the main character, often in first person: I've followed Murakami, Siri Hustvedt, Scarlett Thomas, Rivka Galchen, Rebecca Lee (collectively, most of my current favourites) far down those roads. But some of those that have most moved me are deliberately staged with a multitude of voices, giving the reader direct access to the inner lives of even some of the more minor characters. (Here, some of the characters, like Antoinette and Sallie, could so easily have existed only in relation to Lotto in particular, but Groff insists upon their personhood.)
I did feel that the tautness of the novel was lost a bit in the 'Furies' section. It gets a bit choppy at times, without that same sense of there being a thread tugging ever forward (of story) that marks 'Fates'. I expect that to some extent that's deliberate (since part of the point is that Mathilde's story is much more discontinuous and less apparently fated than Lotto's) and partly flows from Groff's determined avoidance of some of the simpler, more black and white choices she could have made in depicting Mathilde's choices and what they've meant for her happiness, but still, some of the air went out of the sails for me over the back end. Nonetheless, this is a quite wonderful novel, which has touched me while making me think about how we come to be who we are, and live the lives we do.
(I came to it after reading Groff's wonderful story "Ghosts and Empties" in a New Yorker back issue.)
