What’s it about?
Fates & Furies is about a married couple – Lotto and Mathilde. We meet Lotto (somehow a better nickname for Lancelot than Lance?) and his parents: his very tall and mostly absent father, his overly religious mother, and his aunt Sallie, who seems to do most of the actual parenting. His father dies, Lotto gets in trouble, and gets sent away to boarding school where Terrible Things Happen ™. These Terrible Things ™ turn him into a sex maniac who gets through college and then proposes marriage to Mathilde the first time he sees her. She, for some reason accepts. They and their largely terrible group of friends go on from there.
Why should you read it?
Apparently this book has made it onto all kids of awards shortlists. I used my 50 page rule* to bail on this book as early as possible.
I have read this type of book before and would like a different type of story. Perhaps one that doesn’t idealize horrible people just because they have money, or one that is about the actual, real working artists (almost always from a poor background, they’re never from Money) who are working their butts off to make a living and are generally optimistic and maybe a little weird, but wonderful people.
This was not my kind of book. Maybe it’s yours – and that’s fine. Maybe you want to explore why these are horrible people. I get that impulse. My latest idea for a NaNoWriMo book is about someone who is horrible, because I’m curious why she would be that way and how she got there and why she doesn’t think she’s horrible.
But these people were horrible without being interesting to me.
* I have to read the first 50 pages. If I still don’t like it, I can put it down.