Customer Reviews

The Furies

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have one rule...when I start a book, I MUST finish it. After reading The Furies, I might re-examine this personal edict...

The book was a labor, AND not a labor of love.

Ms. Eberstadt does have a unique writing style...short and clipped and she does posses a remakable knowledge of history, especially literary history. The book is filled with lterary refrences in describing the charcters and or their respective emotions. But THAT is the problem...the charcters don't inform me what they are feeling, I had only a passing and or clinical sense of who these cardboard templates were. The only character for whom I felt I knew, through HER dialogue and reactions, was Constance, Gwens friend, a minor charcter at best.

As reader...I don't require action...if I did, I would only read "Thrillers"...(see a previous review I wrote for "Eight White Nights" by : Andre Aciman). I am willing to sit back and let the charcters "talk" to me through their authorship. I just had the sense that Gideons puppets had more depth, charcter and texture than Ms. Eberstadts protagonists. As a reader, I had absolutely nothing invested in these people, I didn't care one way or another how their lives turned out...in fact I found myself hoping something tragic would happen to them in order that they MIGHT develop some "spine" or "depth"...

This book was amazing. I read it 6 weeks ago, and parts of it still reverberate in my mind. It has the juicy appeal of modern chick lit but with the weight and heart of Anna Karenina.
The story is a possible scenario for every adult woman who has ever thoughtlessly plunged head-first into a relationship. The lead character, Gwen, actually marries the artistic guy that every woman dates in her mid-twenties - the one that her family tries not to talk about, praying that they'll break up before things get serious.
Eberstadt's use of the English language is beautiful. The vocabulary extends beyond the 6th-grade level language of much current fiction. I read her last novel and enjoyed it; she has clearly matured in both her writing and life-experiences since then.
This book is rich and wonderful from the first chapter through the last. I hated that it had to end. No one can read this and not feel intensely about the lead characters. What a great book!

I read this book in a matter of days, and it is so different from any book of have ever read thus far. I loved the epic love story, truly feeling connected with the two characters' need for each other. With the characters being so different, the cliche of opposites attracting really was believable. But my favorite parts of this book were with mother and child. I've not become a mother, but if any use of language can invoke the feeling of "knowing", Fernanda Eberstadt has captured it in her descriptions of the bond that begins in the womb, and never truly ends. Gwen's fear was my fear at the idea of a being eating you, living off of your life, your energy. But while it scared me, it made me yearn uncontrollably for that kind of intense, deep commitment to a soul, a being that would be part of me. And the other reviews of this book were right on. The ending, bittersweet, truly made the book a great piece of literature.

This is the first novel I've read by Fernanda Eberstadt, and I will definately be reading her other novels. The Furies: A Novel tells the story of the unlikely romance between Gwen, a moneyed socialite, and Gideon, a poverty-stricken puppeteer, in the boom days of 1990's Manhattan. While their opposite views on politics, religion, and economics initially amuse each other, their disparities eventually lead to the ruination of their marriage.

Eberstadt's writing style is beautiful; so poetic as to almost become allegorical. While the plot line is, ulitmately, predictable, the sweeping narrations and intensely insightful depictions of the characters are delightful to read.