A review by tackling_my_tbr
The Furies by Mandy Beaumont

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

I’ll admit, I completely judged this book by its cover. Here I was thinking it would be your typical crime/thriller — a genre I usually have to be in the right headspace for — which is primarily why I hadn’t picked this one up until now.

I was pretty much completely off the mark. And I’m so glad I was.

It’s probably best to class this as literary fiction; the desperate, raw, unyielding kind. Exactly my type of book. A story intended to highlight female oppression and the trauma women are subjected to on a regular basis. A system of misogyny and the powerlessness of women in a place where only men can belong. A culture that insidiously dehumanises women and violates their rights, continually eroding their sense of self until almost nothing remains. 

Heavy stuff right?

The frightening thing is that it’s set close to home, right in the heart of the outback. Cynthia is a young woman who has lost her family in the most tragic of ways, an ending brought about by dysfunction, neglect and abuse. Her story is one of pure survival when all love and hope has been lost.

The grating feelings I had while reading this reminded me a lot of how I felt when I read A Little Life. There is that omnipresent sense of spiralling despair. And the poetic prose was sparse but strong, vividly evoking the dry, desperate heat of rural Queensland. It was such a sticky, uncomfortable read — and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This is one fierce, devastating debut, but handle with care because there is a lot of graphic and disturbing scenes of violence. Beaumont is definitely one to watch out for in the future though, and I would not hesitate to pick up more of her work.

Thanks to Hachette Australia for my review copy.