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sethdmichaels.bsky.social · @sethdmichaels.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Fates and Furies 8/10

I started out kind of "so what?" on this book and apparently I was wrong, because I finished it in about 5 days and ended up being really moved by it. It has gotten a lot of buzz but totally deserved; it starts out like a typical "two wounded educated white people have a complicated marriage, boo hoo" but it's so compellingly built and well-put-together and well-written that it sort of draws you along in spite of itself.<br/><br/><i>pretentious aside</i> ....one literary point i haven't seen mentioned anywhere else is the debt it owes to Jorge Luis Borges. there's a throwaway reference to Borges in the early going - a quip from the short story "The Garden of Forking Paths." What I was actually reminded of, though, is a different Borges short story, "A Summary of the Works of Herbert Quain." like FATES AND FURIES, "Herbert Quain" describes in some detail a series of plays by a playwright. one of the Quain-penned plays in Borges' story, "The Secret Mirror," is a two-act play in which each act is the same story, but in the second act there's a darker, sadder tinge to it; FATES AND FURIES works in much the same way, as you see the central marriage from the point of view of each main character.<i>pretentious aside</i><br/><br/>anyway, i highly recommend this book and i particularly recommend giving it the benefit of the doubt for the first few pages because it is rich and rewarding. it's clever in structure/form without feeling gimmicky about it - the structural tricks support the theme, and it makes you want to read it again to see the first half knowing what you know from the second half.

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Published 2026-08-18 17:05 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere