Key themes
- The marriage as two different stories — and the gap between them
- The woman who held everything together and was never seen doing it
- Narrative unreliability and the husband who never questioned his own version
About this book
The story of a marriage told twice: first through the husband Lotto's romantic, heroic account of his life as a playwright; then through his wife Mathilde's radically different account of the same events — the version she never shared, full of the things he chose not to see. Groff's novel was Barack Obama's favourite book of 2015 and a National Book Award finalist.
Published in 2015, Fates and Furies was a National Book Award finalist and one of the most discussed novels of its year. Groff described it as a novel about the impossibility of fully knowing another person.
Discussion questions
- The novel splits in two — Lotto's romantic account of their marriage and Mathilde's corrective. How does Groff manage this structural division — and does the second half deepen or merely complicate the first?
- Lotto experiences their marriage as a charmed life in which he is the protagonist. How does Groff develop his obliviousness — with affection, with contempt, or as a genuine tragedy of self-knowledge?
- Mathilde has kept secrets from Lotto that fundamentally change what the marriage was. How does Groff develop this — as betrayal, as protection, or as something that reflects back on Lotto's capacity to see?
- The title invokes the Furies of Greek mythology. How does the classical frame function — as elevated decoration or as genuine structural argument?
- Fates and Furies was Barack Obama's favourite book of 2015. What does it offer — and is this a reasonable critical assessment or just a presidential endorsement?
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