Fates and Furies

Finished April 23
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, read by Will Damron and Julia Whelan

This novel tells the story of a couple, Lotto and Mathilde, first in Lotto's voice and then in Mathilde's. Lotto is short for Lancelot, and he comes from Florida, where his father died young and his mother now holds the purse strings of a water bottling empire. He has a younger sister, Rachel, and a paternal aunt, Sally. After his father's death, he ran wild with a group of local kids a bit older than him, and when things came to a head, got shipped off to boarding school, in exile. He was an outsider at first, until he found a way to be popular, and his anger sadness is one he fights his entire life. He loves attention, adulation, and admiration. When his first choice of career doesn't take him where he dreams, he chances upon another that does. As he keeps looking for more, he finds himself also more lonely.
Mathilde is also exiled at a very young age, sent to an uncle that provides shelter, a basic education, and food, but no more. Mathilde grows up feeling that she doesn't deserve love or happiness, that at the core of her is a dark place. When her uncle won't fund her college, she finds a way to do it without him, but it only confirms her feelings about herself.
When the two meet, they find something in each other that fills a hole in them. And for a long while they feed off each other, but this dependency is both good and bad, and, in the end, unsustainable. Neither one gives all of themselves, Lotto not seeing what Mathilde is really worth, and Mathilde not seeing her own value.
This is a sad book, with characters who never get enough, who hold a grudge long past normal, and some who see the real goodness in people beyond what they themselves believe.

Saints and Sinners

Finished May 22
Saints and Sinners by Edna O'Brien, read by Suzanne Bertish

This collection of ten short stories is all about the people and their relationships with each other. Starting with the story The Shovel Kings, we see a woman who encounters an Irishman in a London bar and learns his story, how he came to London as a boy, hoping to make his fortune and return home to a better life, but ended up not fitting in in either place, an exile in both the city he lived most of his life in and the country he calls home.
In Sinners, the landlady of a bed and breakfast is disgusted by the antics of the trio of people staying in her inn one night and makes it clear to them the next morning.
Madame Cassandra has a woman with marital troubles trying to visit a psychic to learn of her future and what she has told others.
Black Flower has a art teacher who has worked with prison inmates going on an outing with a recently released political prisoner who is a target for revenge still.
Plunder has a young girl caught in a siege, in an unnamed country.
Inner Cowboy has a developmentally delayed young man caught up through circumstance in two different crimes, despite his innocence.
Green Georgette has a young girl describing her and her mother's experience of class division in a small town.
Manhattan Medley has a woman who has moved to the city and gotten caught up into an affair with a well-known married man.
In Send My Roots Rain, a librarian perpetually disappointed in love waits in a hotel lobby for a teatime meeting with a famous poet, reflecting on her past experiences.
And lastly in My Two Mothers, a young woman describes her own view of a mother who left for America, but returned to marry and is touched by that experience.
O'Brien's writing is lyrical and emotive and full of the feelings of her characters. The one problem of listening to this in audio format is not being able to stop and savour the writing, to jot down one's favourite passages. She is a master storyteller.