I’ve enjoyed Lauren Groff’s short stories in the Atlantic and the New Yorker for years, and I love medieval history, so I’m really not sure why it took me so long to pick up this book. It was worth the wait in any case. Groff’s writing is lush and vivid, and her depiction of bustling and brutal life in a 12th-century abbey doesn’t so much leap off the page as suck the reader into it. I found it immersive and quite magical. The magic extends to the protagonist, the Abbess Marie, whose mystic visions guide her to transform the once-ailing abbey into a vibrant women’s (almost-)utopia, fiercely guarded by the nuns themselves. It’s a compelling tale of an imagined medieval community populated by a kaleidoscope of perceptively and affectionately drawn characters, and I liked it very much.

Further reading…