The Furies of ancient myth travelled the world taking deadly revenge on evil mortals. They were angry women dispensing terrifying retribution. In Mandy Beaumont’s The Furies, key character Cynthia awaits retribution that never arrives.
The Queensland outback is blamed for her troubles. Cynthia’s family had high hopes for their property but the land defeated them, leaving the father in despair and the mother isolated and frightened. Her mother murders Cynthia’s little sister and is put in a psychiatric hospital. Her father leaves. The 16 year old girl must somehow survive on her own. She takes a job in the local abattoir where blood, guts and sharp knives dominate the text. Cynthia is raped in a public toilet, watched by a hoard of blood-stained men.
The agony of the girl’s recollections of her sister’s murder, her mother’s madness and the rape haunt her throughout the 256 page book. It is relentless. So relentless it is unbelievable. The all-too-obvious and omnipresent metaphor of the vivisection at the abattoir doesn’t help the story. It detracts. It is contrived.
In the novel, the Furies are all the women everywhere who have suffered at the hands of men. The ancient Furies (there were only three of them) had never themselves been victims of abuse. Cynthia’s place of solace is the bushland near the abattoir. There she feels safe. So safe she conjures up the images of Furies in phantasmagorical splendour. Swirling voices call to her. She feels the power of all other women who have suffered at the hands of men. She draws strength from her conjured-up sister-victims. Or are the furies a metaphor for the solace of the bush? “Arcs of vivid light from the sun bounce between clusters of bushes and rocks.” Or is Cynthia mad like her mother?
It is difficult to categorise this book. Rampant misandry? Gothic horror? Graphic sex novel? Existentialism? Fantasy? Propaganda? Call for a female revolution? Diatribe against Queensland outback? All of these.
Who might get something from this book? Probably it will annoy traditional feminists. They like men! The story will not help women who have been abused or victimised. It offers no solutions. It tells victims they will not recover. It tells them they might go mad.
Mandy Beaumont Teaches Creative Writing at Griffith University. She studies feminist theory and is inspired by French existentialist icon, Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex.
The Furies by Mandy Beaumont
Published by Hachette in Australia and New Zealand, 2022
ISBN: 978 0 7336 4307
$33 paperback
$15 e-book
Review by Carol Dance
Featured image : Author of Mandy Beaumont’s ‘The Furies’