What readers think of Matrix, plus links to write your own review.

This is a book about female empowerment set during a time when women were considered property and had no voice, no say, and most of all no power. Women were nothing. But in the hands of spectacular author Lauren Groff, these women—nuns in the Middle Ages—come alive with a story so strong, so resonant, so forceful, and so feminist in its telling that we readers are transported to inhabit their piece of the world where women are in charge and virtually all men are shunned.

This is the story of Marie de France, a real person who lived in the 12th century, albeit very little is known about her. Groff has filled in Marie's historical bare-bones story with pulsating life. Born as the result of a rape by a nobleman, she moved to the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine when she was 14, but was soon sent to a far-flung abbey in England to serve as the prioress (and eventually the abbess) of the convent even though she had no vocation. After Marie recovers from her considerable resentment and anger at being summarily banished from Eleanor's court, she comes into her own, rescuing the dilapidated abbey from a slow demise and its inhabitants from death. Marie has extraordinary organizational and management skills, but what truly sets her apart is her gift for writing poetry and her dramatic and striking visions of the Virgin Mary.

Lauren Groff's writing is absolutely exquisite. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph is superb. The descriptions of the rain and mud, the birds chattering, the eagles soaring, the human body odor, the icy cold stone floors…all of it is just so visceral and surprisingly passionate and sensual that it plunges the reader right into this Middle Ages' abbey.

Rich in historical detail, this is a deeply creative book with complex and vivid characters. It is a literary gift…a masterpiece of historical fiction.