Longlisted for the 2023 Stella Prize
The Furies – Mandy Beaumont
Fiction · Hachette Australia
About the Book
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?
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.
“The Furies are personifications of female anger and devastation, and this is the book equivalent of a hand-grenade lobbed at oppression..”
– 2023 Stella Prize Judges
About the Author
Mandy Beaumont
Mandy Beaumont is an award-winning writer and a researcher in creative writing. Her debut novel The Furies was shortlisted for the Fiction Book of the Year in the Queensland Literary Awards, and 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 is a convenor in creative writing at Griffith University and has just submitted her PhD in creative writing at RMIT.
Further Reading
Reviews
“Stays with you . . . Beaumont’s prose shines.” – Madeleine Gray, The Saturday Paper
“Stark, poetic. . . A rallying cry for revolution.” – Carmel Bird, Sydney Morning Herald
“Beautiful and lyrical.” – Natalie Kon-yu, The Conversation
Listen to Mandy Beaumont discuss The Furies on ABC Nightlife
Hear more about The Furies on ABC Radio National’s The Book Show
Listen to Mandy Beaumont on RTR FM’s Artbeat
Judges’ Report
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.
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