They were the perfect couple. Lotto (short for Lancelot) was the light in every room, the person everyone turned toward. He was an actor and then later a playwright. Mathilde was his queen; a tall pretty girl who never interacted with anyone until the night he saw her across a crowded room at a party and said 'Marry me'. Two weeks later they did.
From the start, they were everything to each other. Lotto came from money but his mother disowned him when she heard he had married without her permission. Mathilde had nothing, no family, no money. Yet they knew their lives were going to be golden and jumped into the future. For years, they were poor. Lotto didn't make it in the acting world; getting just enough roles to keep his dreams alive but not to support them. Mathilde was the one who went out to work and kept them going. Then one night, drunken, Lotto sat down at the computer and poured out his soul. The resulting play was a resounding success, as was the ones that followed every year. Soon the two were rich in their own right.
Then we read the other side of the fairy tale. This was the story from Mathilde's perspective. We saw how she spent her life living the dream Lotto wanted to see and that she was very different from how he saw her. She spent her life behind the scenes, altering and manipulating life so that it fit the dreams Lotto had. The reality he perceived was totally false and he was instead a player in the spider webs Mathilde wove.
This book was a tour de force for Groff. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and an Amazon Best Book of the Year. It was a NPR Morning Edition Book Club Pick and a best book by various newspapers, Kirkus, Library Journal and many more. The first half of the book from Lotto's perspective is amazing; then the second half leaves the reader stunned as they realize that they had also bought into the manipulated reality that Mathilde created. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.
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