The Furies
A Novel
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4.6 • 7 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Furies is a psychologically complex, dark and twisting novel about loss, obsession and the deep tragedies that can connect us to each other even as they blind us to our fate, from the bestselling author of A Thousand Ships
After losing her fiancé in a shocking tragedy, Alex Morris moves from London to Edinburgh to make a break with the past. Formerly an actress, Alex accepts a job teaching drama therapy at a school commonly referred to as "The Unit," a last-chance learning community for teens expelled from other schools in the city.
Her students have troubled pasts and difficult personalities, and Alex is an inexperienced teacher, terrified of what she's taken on and drowning in grief. Her most challenging class is an intimidating group of teenagers who have been given up on by everyone before her. But Alex soon discovers that discussing the Greek tragedies opens them up in unexpected ways, and she gradually develops a rapport with them.
But are these tales of cruel fate and bloody revenge teaching more than Alex ever intended? And who becomes responsible when these students take the tragedies to heart, and begin interweaving their darker lessons into real life with terrible and irrevocable fury?
Published in the UK under the title The Amber Fury.
"Steady pacing paired with well-timed foreshadowing and fully realized characters make this one compelling from the beginning. Fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History (1992), Erin Kelly's The Poison Tree (2011), and Tana French's The Likeness (2008) will likely enjoy the new perspective Haynes' conversational style offers to similar material." —Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Alex Morris accepts a former professor's offer to fill a sudden vacancy at an Edinburgh school for troubled teens, the last problem the young London stage director anticipates is having too powerful an impact on her students. But that's precisely what happens when the Greek dramas she assigns start to resonate with her fierce, yet fragile 15-year-olds with life-shattering consequences in Haynes's haunting debut novel. Though Haynes read classics at Cambridge, nothing in her resume as a comedian, journalist, broadcaster, and children's author (The Great Escape) quite sets the stage for the book's emotionally raw characters especially Alex and her would-be acolyte, Mel, who struggles to make sense of a capricious world despite profound deafness as they march inexorably toward the fog-shrouded precipice. Cleverly plotted, cannily paced, and unafraid to pose questions that don't have easy answers, this accomplished psychological mystery demonstrates the way that sometimes it may take being lost in the darkness to enable us to glimpse the light.
