100 Books That Defined the Decade

Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies (2015)

Please. Marriage is made of lies. Kind ones, mostly. Omissions. If you give voice to the things you think every day about your spouse, you’d crush them to paste. She never lied. Just never said.

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Essential stats: Groff’s delicious, masterful novel was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, but that doesn’t really cover it.

What made it defining? It was basically the highbrow Gone Girl, for one thing. But more importantly for this section: Fates and Furies was the book everyone you knew was reading in 2015, including everyone you didn’t actually know because they were a famous person that you followed on Instagram. It was, according to Laura Miller and also to me, the year’s most talked-about novel—not least because it was President Barack Obama’s favorite book of the year.

It even inspired some jazz. Well, why not?

That’s a pretty cool cover: Yep. And if you ask me, it’s still influencing book cover design. (It’s by Rodrigo Corral and Adalis Martinez, by the way.)

While we’re here: We should all revisit Groff’s mic-drop By the Book interview. And oh, right, her mic-drop answer to that question that only female writers are ever asked. We stan!