'Defiant, ferocious and unyielding - The Furies is a unique and breathtakingly powerful debut novel from Mandy Beaumont. For those who love Charlotte Wood, Margaret Atwood and Carmen Maria Machado.
'Cynthia was just about to turn sixteen when the unthinkable happened. Her mother was taken away by the police, and her father left without a word three months later. After that night, Cynthia began to walk in slow circles outside the family home looking for traces of her sister Mallory - she's sure that she must be somewhere else now, wherever that is.
'Cynthia knows that she doesn't belong here. Her mother never belonged here either. This is the place of violence. Despair. The long dry. Blood caked under the nails. Desperate men. Long silences. The place where mothers go mad in locked bedrooms, where women like Cynthia imagine better futures.
'As a threatening wind begins to dry-whirl around her, seldom seen black clouds form above, roll over the golden-brown land - is that Mallory she can hear in the growling mass? In the harsh drought-stricken landscape of outback Queensland a woman can be lost in so many ways. The question is, will Cynthia be one of them?'
Source : publisher's blurb
'A brutal feminist reckoning marks this debut novel.'
'After it happened, I’d walk in slow circles outside the house looking for her, my feet hardening and my skin turning a deep red.
'So begins The Furies, the work of debut novelist Mandy Beaumont.'
Sylvia Plath’s grave sits atop a very steep hill in the English village of Heptonstall. Plath’s gravestone records her name as “Sylvia Plath Hughes”. The “Hughes” lettering appears noticeably duller, as if scratched away by inkless pens or keys. And this is precisely the case. Every year packs of visitors, usually women, make the pilgrimage to Heptonstall to pay tribute to Plath and to desecrate the name of the man who is known to have desecrated her. Improvised awls lie around the grave.' (Introduction)
Sylvia Plath’s grave sits atop a very steep hill in the English village of Heptonstall. Plath’s gravestone records her name as “Sylvia Plath Hughes”. The “Hughes” lettering appears noticeably duller, as if scratched away by inkless pens or keys. And this is precisely the case. Every year packs of visitors, usually women, make the pilgrimage to Heptonstall to pay tribute to Plath and to desecrate the name of the man who is known to have desecrated her. Improvised awls lie around the grave.' (Introduction)
'After it happened, I’d walk in slow circles outside the house looking for her, my feet hardening and my skin turning a deep red.
'So begins The Furies, the work of debut novelist Mandy Beaumont.'
'A brutal feminist reckoning marks this debut novel.'
