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December Frost

A slash of red lipstick in a pale face.

That’s the image that cemented Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff in my mind as a novel of poetic significance. That image is so visceral, so vivid, almost violent, that I knew I wanted to know the girl who wore rouge like a wound and the man who loved her for it.

Fates and Furies, the story of a marriage between two extraordinary people, is a tale of duality. It brings into sharp focus the contrast between the surface of a person’s life and the real meat that lies beneath. This book is, without any question in my mind, a Greek tragedy in the most classic sense of the word.

Lancelot “Lotto” Satterwhite, the first-born son of a wealthy southern family narrates the first half of the book, Fates. Groff paints him as a young prince, practically a demi-god, raised by his fervently religious mother to be aware of his own genius. So here he is, our royal, tragically flawed hero blessed by luck and dogged by fate. We spend a few hundred pages glossing over 40 or so years with him, and it’s very literary and comments nicely on the steady progression of a modern life. To be honest, Lotto is one of the most annoyingly optimistic characters I’ve ever crossed paths with. What makes him interesting (and this is part of what make Groff such a masterful writer) is the way a series of traumatizing events in his teen years deepens and mellows his otherwise glowing personality.

Mathilde Yoder, who was also born with a name she doesn’t use, is the dark mirror of Lotto’s life. While he tells us his story with a hazy, golden gentleness that is only sweeter for the bumps and brushes with depression and suicide, Mathilde’s own life remains mysterious, even to her husband. But he doesn’t think much of it. It can almost be argued that he doesn’t think much at all—he doesn’t have to. His life is one of privilege and his wife guards it ferociously.

While Mathilde is almost certainly the more compelling character, she isn’t what I would call a literary darling. Once we delve into her half, Furies, we are dropped into a bottomless well of tenacity, loneliness and, somewhere deep down in the dark, shame. Where Lotto is a lucky duck in a big pond of possibilities, Mathilde is a spider, carefully weaving the path of her life and always looking out for both prey and enemies. She has reason to be this way. She suffers through an isolated childhood, bounced between increasingly incompetent caretakers, until she eventually pays her way through college by being the live-in Sub of an artistic and elegant man. She only escapes when she marries Lotto, a calculated move in her ceaseless game of chess.

Reading through this book, I often found myself thinking, “How can this get worse? What else could possibly happen?” Because even though the balance of their 24-year marriage is happy (and at times mundane), it’s impossible to look back and not see the craggy, sharp-edged obstacles standing out like Greek ruins. I looked back on Lotto and Mathilde’s life together and I marveled that two people could be so intimate, so close, and yet never know each other. That even something as singular as marriage, could be so separate.

To get you through this harrowing, poetic, tragic and (morbidly) fascinating novel, I recommend two bottles of wine, one for Lotto, and one for Mathilde. God knows you’ll definitely need both.

For Lotto, pick up a bottle of Baileyana Firepeak Chardonnay:

This chardonnay from the Edna valley exhibits bright notes of pear, lemon and pineapple with layers of minerality and bright acidity. Just as Lotto is tempered and shaped by certain events in his life, this wine’s fruit-driven palette is balanced by toasted oak and hints of vanilla on the finish.

For Mathilde’s tendency towards deceit and hidden secrets, Concha Y Toro Marques De Concha Carmenere is an excellent choice:

Once mistaken for Merlot in Chile, this grape of French origin produces a wine deep and dark in color. This bottling exhibits aromas of black fruit and pepper with notes of blackberry, dark chocolate and vanilla on the palette, with well-integrated oak and voluptuous, fine-grained tannins on the finish.

Wine pairing provided by Alicia Giuffrida, CSW, Wine Director of Gallery of Wines

The painting above is December Frost by Alicia Giuffrida, prints found here.