![]() ![]() VICE: Was this book a reaction against the way marriages are often written about in American literary fiction-from a single perspective, which is so often the male perspective? We talked about her rejection of "purity" in storytelling, her book as an exploration of American privilege, and why sometimes the most subversive thing you can do in a novel is suggest that married couples have sex. When she gets angry she does so with a flash of amusement in her eyes that makes you suspect she knows something you don't. She's fiercely effusive about other authors' work but humble about her own. When I sat down with Groff in a bar in Brooklyn there was a warmth and vibrancy to her. On the sentence level, this technique is mirrored in a series of smaller fissures: a passage of beautiful, looping description often breaks on an unexpected full stop. ![]() It's how Groff allows the light to get in. ![]() The breakage allows established facts to be undermined. There is no alternation between perspectives, no intertwinement of accounts, just this single divorce of voices. First comes the husband's story, then that of his wife. Drama is added by the simple structural decision to break the book into two halves. Groff slowly reveals layers of secrecy and serendipity in the relationship. The focus of Fates and Furies is a marriage between a seemingly indestructible couple named Lotto and Mathilde. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |