There's a mystical quality to Matrix which is apt given its surface subject - the life and works of visionary 12th century abbess Marie (in England, though born in France), from being sent to the abbey as prioress at the age of 17 by Queen Eleanor of Aquitane to her death many decades later, having overseen the abbey's growth and flourishing over that time, often in defiance of both Rome and the crown.
But that mystical quality, of mystery, ellipsis and sliding truths, arises more from the combination of style and setting that Groff produces, in an impressive departure from the thoroughly contemporary mode of Fates and Furies and her short stories - the novel sustains a third person present tense voice in which Groff's characteristic flights of language are part of the structure, at once defamiliarising and evocative, for rendering an alien historical and cultural setting legible,[*] and more to the point the vision (of another kind) that it creates of a female-centred society, kept apart from the rest of the world and constructed as an extension of Marie's own will and self, and the associated - chewy - ideas it therefore puts into play, around female-ness, power, and the construction and costs of the uses of both.
I found it very easy to become lost within Matrix. I never knew exactly where it was going - although her late-in-life realisation about her own pride was a mild disappointment in its familiarity - but it has a strong sense of story and Marie's inner life is clearly depicted. I imagine there are plenty of anachronisms in its depiction of its historical period, but that seems besides the point given the nature of the act of imagination that the novel enacts. It feels a bit like a fable - aphoristic maybe - and it's unafraid of nuance; I wondered whether there would be a reckoning for how Marie treat Avice and her pregnancy, and the novel is explicit about the ecological cost of the various massive engineering projects that the nuns complete in consolidating their power. I also found it pretty moving, especially Marie's relationships with the various significant women in her life (Eleanor and Wulfhild in particular).
[*] A possible compare and contrast, and a book that it slightly reminded me of, is The Buried Giant - although Matrix's setting is in fact several centuries more recent, being the time of the Middle Ages, the Crusades, Richard the Lionheart vs the post-Arthurian Dark Ages)
