Mandy Beaumont's debut novel The Furies was longlisted for the prestigious Stella Prize and shortlisted for the MUD Literary Prize as well as the Queensland Literary Awards Fiction Book of the Year. Her collection of short stories, Wild, Fearless Chests, was shortlisted for the Richell Prize and the Dorothy Hewett Award. Stories from the collection also won the MOTH International Short Story Prize and were shortlisted for other notable awards. She was a convenor in creative writing and communications at Griffith University for over a decade, and holds a PhD and a Research Masters in creative writing. She is also a regular feature writer and book reviewer for The Big Issue.
A woman in a small Australian town is haunted. Death is all around
her: she is still grieving her murdered sister, Mallory, while the
spectre of her mother's arrest and father's abandonment hover over
her. A baby she was reluctant to carry arrives as a stillborn. Her
husband, Simon, deserts her. The townsfolk don't allow her to
properly mourn, as gossip and malicious judgement encircles her in
the abattoir where she works. In Mandy Beaumont's second book of
fiction, The Furies, the reader is confronted with a maelstrom of
grief. Structured in three parts, the book is narrated by the
protagonist, Cynthia, with occasional chapters voiced by her
mother. Cynthia's past and present are shadowed by Mallory's
disappearance and the misdemeanours perpetrated by Simon, Cynthia's
father and the various men around her. The Furies is an ambitious
debut novel; Beaumont's attempt at a dreamlike stylism (think
Olivia Sudjic) sometimes misses the mark, coming across as
overwrought as sentences end in conjunctions and verbs.
Nonetheless, this is an introspective book that will resonate with
readers of literary thriller-esque fiction such as The Airways by
Jennifer Mills or Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down. A fiercely
feminist novel, The Furies is an interrogation of the scars left by
unaddressed trauma, on bodies, psyches and the land. What does it
mean to carry so much, and to yearn for revenge? How does it feel
to hurt and be hurt?
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