Discussion questions for Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

1. 1. Mathilde hired a private investigator to unearth all of Chollie’s secrets?  Why?  Which character’s secrets would you have chosen to unearth?
   2. On page 389, Mathilde thinks: “She wished she’d been the kind Mathilde, the good one.  His idea of her.”  Wasn’t she the “kind” one in practice, even if she never saw herself that way on the inside?  Does being kind in practice make one a kind person?
   3. Why is Lotto’s section titled “Fates” and Mathilde’s section titled “Furies”?  Is the author trying to tell us something about their characters or do you think “Fates” and “Furies” has more to do with the action in the book?
   4. Fates and Furies was a National Book Award Finalist in 2015.  The winner that year was The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johson.  The other finalists were Refund: Stories by Karen E. Bender, The Turner House by Angela Flournoy, and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.  Have you read any of these other books?  How do you think Fates and Furies compares?
   5. Would Lotto’s perspective be worth giving without Mathilde’s?  Vice versa?
   6. Are Lotto and Mathilde reliable narrators?
   7. Lotto’s half of the story is told in a very linear way, from start to finish.  Mathilde’s, on the other hand, is told in chapters that alternate between past and present.  Why do you think Groff chose to use two different structures for the two halves of the book?  What do you think she is trying to tell us about Lotto’s history or state of mind, and Mathilde’s?
   8. Did you notice a change in the tone of the bracketed asides from one section of the book to another.  Slate’s reviewer says, “Lotto’s story is annotated by the Fates, the Greek goddesses of destiny, and Mathilde’s by the Furies, the goddesses of retribution.”  What do you think?  Does this help you make sense of the book?
   9. The New York Times’s reviewer says: “In “Fates and Furies,” Groff doesn’t present two accounts of the same events, about which reasonable people might disagree. She presents two critically different sets of events.”  NPR’s reviewer says: [Groff doesn’t just tell two versions of the same story, but two completely different stories that happen to contain some of the same details.”
      1. In the first half of the book, from Lotto’s perspective, we never hear that he had any ongoing relationship with his mother, but Mathilde talks about phone calls, invitations to visit, regular video chats, etc.  Why do you think none of that was mentioned from Lotto’s perspective?
      2. Similarly, the episode where Lotto gets labeled a misogynist is left out entirely of Mathilde’s story.  Why?
      3. What other examples can you think of?

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