The Furies

by Fernanda Eberstadt

A new novel — her largest and most ambitious — by the author of Low Tide, Isaac and His Devils, and When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth. In The Furies, Fernanda Eberstadt brings all her gifts of insight, feeling, and storytelling to bear on passion and the balance of power in marriage. She tells the story of a courtship of opposites, of a blissful love affair — and of how it turns into a marriage that helplessly self-destructs.

The place is Manhattan in the boom of the 1990s. Gwen Lewis thinks her life is perfect. She’s thirty, smart, high-achieving, single; she’s the director of an institute that’s helping post-Communist Russia democratize. She has family money, a condominium on the Upper West Side, and a suitable boyfriend, a banker.

Then she meets Gideon Wolkowitz. Gideon is an impoverished puppeteer who works in an anarchist squat on the Lower East Side: an impecunious sweet-talking huckster, a messianic dreamer, a seventies socialist throwback, a secular Jew. Gwen and Gideon fall desperately in love. Their sex is epic. Their love seems like a gift from the gods — destined to heal all wounds. Each is the child of a broken home; each fills the other’s unsuspected aching emptiness. The lovers hole up in Gwen’s apartment, feasting on stolen nights of ecstasy and confession.

Then Gwen gets pregnant and their romantic idyll is broken, and the angry ghosts of their ancestral pasts rise to claim them. Gwen is pulled into a Puritan devotion to work and motherhood that only a driven career woman or Massachusetts pilgrim could understand. Gideon, torn by his anger that Gwen has ended their sex life, by his native hatred of her “socialite” values and his love of the woman herself, begins to hear the call of shtetl ways and the synagogue. The reader watches helplessly as the divisive forces of money, worldly ambition, and self-will complete the shipwreck of Gwen and Gideon’s love.

A novel that wholly engages us by the depth of its understanding and the power of its storytelling.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

464 pages, Hardcover

First published September 9, 2003

Reviews

[Shelby Emplit · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book.

Like someone else said, her wordplay is very good. I found myself laughing quite a bit.
I really enjoyed the character of Gideon. But the book evoked a sadness in me throughout.
It managed to confirm the thing that is hammered into us daily, living in the world we do: Everything
ends, and the things that burn the hottest are the ones guaranteed a swift and explosive ending.
I hate that idea! It cheapens my relationship with the person I care the most about, it makes me lose
faith in my romantic ideals! Yes, everything may have an ending but that's really not the point, is it?
I was not expecting a fairy tale love story. In all honesty, I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, but it
sure wasn't what I got. The tragedy at the end makes you see Gideon for what he really is; a clown. And a crazy
one at that. Don't get me wrong, I hated, hated, hated Gwen. Pretensious, annoying and frigid. Things I can't
abide, even in a book.

Still have mixed feelings. I enjoyed it. But did I really like it? In a word, no. It was too
much like standing in front of a mirror, and having someone tell me things about myself that I
know aren't true. If that makes any sense.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly good read by a realtively unknown. Yeah, it's the most played to death rendition of woman meets man, woman and man fall into the rigors of blissful love, then start their journey down the road to complete relationship dismemberment. Yup, been there, done that. But her word play is second to none, fully implementing her creative wherewithal. Witty and full of fervor.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fernanda Eberstadt is an author I discovered when I reviewed Rat for BookBrowse. The Furies almost did me in. It is wise and witty while at the same time serious and sad. The author has said on her website, "Few writers...have tackled the subject of pregnancy and children...the whole experience of bearing and giving birth to a baby has gone strangely unrecorded." Well tackle it she does, with the ferocity of a Greek tragedian: note the title. Her recording of bearing and giving birth to a baby is accomplished with excruciating detail, but so is her recording of the power of motherlove and the all encompassing nature of raising an infant: the obsession, exhaustion and joy.

Eberstadt has written a most modern story. Gwen is a 30-something career woman in the midst of the 90s boom. She works in New York City, lives in a high end apartment, regularly travels the world and loves Russia with a passionate idealism. Gideon lives in a rent controlled dump, creating anarchist puppet theater and harbors a mix of Jewish mysticism and 70s socialist views. Their explosive sexual coupling is straight out of a Joni Mitchell song. At first I thought I was reading about a great love story, with two lost and lonely souls overcoming all barriers to create one of the world's great passions.

Trouble is, so did they think but parenthood turns out to be their mutual Achilles heel because both are from badly broken homes, from parental abandonment and all they are really seeking is unconditional love though neither is up to the challenge of providing it. This to me was so real, possibly because I have lived it. The first child of such a romance changes everything in a variety of ways. The sex goes bad, the sharing of responsibility for each other and the child is beyond their basically immature capabilities. A child interferes with each parent's conception of personal freedom and tests every one of their idealistic tenants.

This is not a Jodi Picoult or Anita Shreve novel. It is way more truthful while also being whip smart sassy and based on a frightening array of knowledge about everything from puppetry to post-communist Russia to world economics to New York City politics and more. Fernanda Eberstadt writes like a Fury herself and while her book is not for the faint of heart, it is about how we live now because of how our forebears lived before. It is about the human condition, how we muddle through and the true cost of love. Just be warned that if you read it to the end, it will take you a while to recover.

[Mary Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is truly heartbreaking. I loved every minute of it, mostly because the life moments described in it are graphically real. I've never before read such descriptions of love, motherhood, marriage, and religion that convey the unbridled joy and euphoria, as well as the rage and complicated raw difficulties, of these relationships. The characters are charming, idiosyncratic, and flawed. The book is clever and intricate in its exploration of how people navigate the trainwrecks of their lives after making decisions based on love, decisions which in retrospect are enormous mistakes. If you like A.M. Homes, Lorrie Moore, or Lionel Shriver, I can't recommend this one highly enough, but watch out -- the darkness that starts to roar up from the very beginning becomes full-throttle, pitch-black by the book's end.

[GEPL Staff Picks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is truly heartbreaking. I loved every minute of it, mostly because the life moments described in it are graphically real. I've never before read such descriptions of love, motherhood, marriage, and religion that convey the unbridled joy and euphoria, as well as the rage and complicated raw difficulties, of these relationships. The characters are charming, idiosyncratic, and flawed. The book is clever and intricate in its exploration of how people navigate the trainwrecks of their lives after making decisions based on love, decisions which in retrospect are enormous mistakes. If you like A.M. Homes, Lorrie Moore, or Lionel Shriver, I can't recommend this one highly enough, but watch out -- the darkness that starts to roar up from the very beginning becomes full-throttle, pitch-black by the book's end. -Mary Kay

[Audrey]

I'm having a hard time reading this book, which is a disappointment after how much I enjoyed reading Rat (also by Fernanda Eberstadt). I am going to keep plugging away at it, although I tend to pick up and read other books between reading chapters of The Furies.

Well, I gave up on this book about 1/3 of the way through. I haven't given up on the author though, and will peruse her other books.

(This program will not allow me to spell pursue correctly in the above sentence. It keeps reverting to the way I first misspelled it.)

[Aran · Rating 1 out of 5]

Anfangs war ich kurz davor das Buch abzubrechen. Es kam mir sehr oberflächlich vor. Ich habe viel überflogen. Ab Seite 300 war ich dann aber plötzlich so tief in der Geschichte, dass ich nicht mehr aufhören konnte zu lesen. Mehr als einmal hätte ich gerne das Geschehen verändert. Weil genau das ja nun nicht möglich ist, hatte ich nach dem Zuklappen wohl einen riesen Kloß im Hals.

P.s. Ich habe das Buch natürlich auf deutsch gelesen. Diese Version gibt es hier bei goodreads nicht. Es heißt "Liebeswut".

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book manages to take an extremely romantic relationship and applies every possible negative cliche ever imagined for how a man and the woman might knowingly and with intent sabotage their relationship. Eberstadt does an equal disservice to both men and women in the process of grinding through to the sad conclusion of this novel.

[Abby Peck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the main boy character when the girl main character liked him and didn't like him when she turned against him, it was written too one-sided, I felt like his story should be told and not only by talking through her.

[Lauren]

I started this book in June and decided that I didn't like it enough to keep reading it and put it down. I am trying my best to get through it. So far I am not impressed. Taking another break. This book is horrible.

[Corinne Wasilewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book chronicles one couple's journey from love to hate with almost flawless precision. I only wish Eberstadt hadn't ended with the pithy maxim about the horse-breaker. It diminished everything that had come before, rendering the story a kind of parable.

[Kereen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read. Even though it was sad and I shed a few tears I loved the way she used her words, it captivated me. I must praise good writing talent when I see it. She really has great writing skills.

[Nick Szegda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tragedy, love sex art and self interest.
Good stuff.

[Jennifer]

good

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

slow beginning, but a great story. would be good for a book club?

[Blanca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read Rat and loved it. Looking forward to reading this. Eberstadt has a great lyric voice, but the format seems too long and the wonderful phrasing and imagery is washed out by the novel's length.

[Gretchen Achilles · Rating 3 out of 5]

So good, but so dark and sad by the end, I cannot give it all the stars I wanted to at the start of the book.