BOOK REVIEW: "The Furies" by Fernanda Eberstadt

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When I googled “dramatic love story novels” this book was one of the two out of the lot that interested me the most (the first one was “The Pact” by Jodi Picoult, as recommended by me before). In the bookstore, the woman working there was all nuts about it telling me to bring loads of tissues while reading it. Would be a good sign…

Unfortunately, this 700-pages novel needs 250 pages to gather momentum with the reader. It just fails capturing your interest and the story was somehow too creepy for me to get involved. Every character seems to be weird and have strange attitudes and habits and, what’s more, everyone is described to be ugly and unattractive. How could Eberstadt do such a thing? Not good.

However, at some point, you just can’t stop reading as you simply get to know everything about the characters and you can’t help but get involved and want to know what happens to them. And then there’s the ending. The ending (the last 150) is truly read-worthy. It’s written in a very endearing style and moves the heart (as the woman from the book store told me :)) by daring to be unconventional.

All in all, though, this novel doesn’t offer enough to make me recommend it. Its plot is too freaky, its characters too unsympathetic and the first 250 pages are a pure nuisance.