Buy it here. (out with Hachette)
Awards
2023 Stella Prize Longlist
2022 QLD Literary Awards: Fiction Book Award Finalist
2023 MUD Literary Prize: Book of the Year Shortlist.
Defiant, ferocious and unyielding – The Furies is a debut novel by Mandy Beaumont that explores the isolation felt by so many women, and how powerful we can be when we join together. It puts her firmly on the literary map, blazing forth from the terrain of Charlotte Wood, Margaret Atwood and Carmen Maria Machado, with a unique and breathtaking power.
Praise for The Furies
The Furies are personifications of female anger and devastation, and this is the book equivalent of a hand-grenade lobbed at oppression. Our heroine is an abattoir worker and the metaphor is blunt force – this is not an accident. Beaumont casts an unflinching look at how patriarchy manifests in poverty, particularly in an era where postpartum depression and psychosis wasn’t a medical condition but a personal character flaw. There is an inventiveness of language here that is wholly engaging, and every single character in this book exudes a sense of feral vitality. A powerful meditation on gendered, inherited, and historical trauma.
2023 Stella Award Judges comments.
The Furies is a ferocious story of female emancipation amid the hard facts of outback life. We meet Cynthia, the damaged daughter, who endures the grief of losing her family to violence. The convention-breaking prose is spare and brutal and astonishing. It’s a vital call to arms.
2022 QLD Literary Awards Judges comments.
Beaumont’s descriptions of the punishment of women for not being men, and the punishment of women for men being men, and the punishment of women for nothing at all, are brutal, sensory, and exquisite. This book is a battle cry of being and becoming, of legacy and revolution. It speaks to lived experience, and the power of raising one’s voice. Beaumont’s salt-drenched story writhes between the clashing undercurrents of underlying rage and conditioned acceptance; it is a bridge between disempowerment and overcoming. Painted in shades of poetic realism, The Furies is recommended for men who are complicit, women who revolt, ardent existentialists, and philosophical feminists of every which wave.
Arts Hub. Read full review here.
‘The Furies is an ambitious, complex story about freedom and the power of collective rage. Beaumont adds her words, her fury, to the collective cries of women everywhere.’
Readings Books. Read full review here.
“Beaumont’s prose shines…it stays with you, like the smell of a campfire you can’t wash out”
The Saturday Paper. Read full review here.
“Expect this debut novel to collect a swag of awards for its portrayal of isolation, misogyny, grief, mental health, violence, and characters lost and found…Beaumont envelopes the reader in emotion and despair.”
The Courier Mail/The Daily Telegraph.
“The writing is excellent, the impact makes it unforgettable and its relevance is undeniable. A very fine novel, indeed”
Queensland Reviewers Collective. Read full review here.
“This is a debut novel that screams”
Better Read Than Dead Bookstore.
“The Furies is totally dark and hopeful and satisfying and sad and wild. It is a beautiful book”
Neighbourhood Books
“Love every single word. Am so moved by this portrait of these women and the connection they have with all of us: That we are all of these women and all these women are us. I could smell this writing – and I’m so grateful for the epilogue – yes, read it to see ourselves in this, but more/equally essential is to read it if you don’t recognise who you might be in this story.”
Jacinta Parsons
“The explosive power of The Furies – this novel is going to be a sensation.”
Bernadette Brennan
‘…with hope throbbing in the operatic whispers and melodies of the Furies, she will form part of a revolution. From her abjection will come a kind of victory, a victory aligned with the rebel cries of Sylvia Plath and Toni Morrison’
The Sydney Morning Herald. Read full review here.
“This is Australian pastoral noir…Beaumont’s writing is at its most beautiful when describing the bush … It is in the bush that she hears the Furies. … hears the voices of women who have died, all the women who have suffered violence by men.”
The Newtown Review of Books. Read full review here.
“… she firmly places herself in the same league as Australian contemporaries such as Charlotte Wood, Sophie Laguna and Hannah Kent. As beautiful as it is gut-wrenching, this is a debut that pulls no punches”
Mt Isa News/The North West Star. Read full review here.
“The Furies shares much with the writing of Barbara Baynton, who characterised the bush as fearsome and masculine, entwining both qualities into one hostile entity. Beaumont’s prose is beautiful and lyrical. The landscape intrudes and menaces throughout: “the river systems … now empty and moaning for rain” and the land itself “a culprit”.”
The Conversation. Read full review here.
“Yes, I have raved about this before and I’ll do it again! The Furies is uncomfortable, lyrical and beautiful all at once. Set against a drought-stricken outback Queensland, and told in rhythmic and vivid language, it tells the story of a woman named Cynthia who suffers the unspeakable and dares to overcome it. This book screams against complacency, I dare you to read it.”
Booktopia. Read the full review here.
MANDY BEAUMONT 