The Furies
By Katie Lowe
Blurb
1998. A sixteen-year-old girl is found dead on school property, dressed in white and posed on a swing. No known cause of death.
Four girls know what happened.
And until now they’ve kept their silence.
Violet is returning home, back to the sleepy coastal town which holds so many memories.
In 1998, after a tragic accident claimed the lives of her father and sister, she joins Elm Hollow Academy, a private girls’ school with an unpleasant history of 17th century witch trials.
There she is drawn to Robin, Grace, Alex and their charismatic teacher, Annabel; she is invited to join them in their advanced study group.
There they learn about art, literature and the grisly history of the school. Though Annabel claims her classes aren’t related to ancient rites and rituals, she warns them off the topic, describing it as little more than mythology. However, the more the girls learn, the more they start to believe that magic is real, and that together they can harness it.
But when the body of a former member of the society is found on campus nine months after the she disappeared, fingers are pointed at those closest to her. Leading Violet to wonder whether she can trust her friends, teachers, or even herself.
Our Review
It is 1998 and Violet has just joined exclusive Elm Hollow Academy after a tragic car accident kills both her father and her younger sister. Violet has never found it easy to make friends, preferring her books over putting in a particular effort to make friends but when she encounters Robin and her friends, she feels an inexplicable pull towards them.
The girls are part of an exclusive study group run by their art teacher Annabel. The group meet to learn of the tragic history of the school, in particular, the tragic death of the founder of the school when she was burnt as a witch. They discuss art and literature in their group, but the girls are particularly interested in rites and rituals, specifically those that involve taking revenge.
When someone dies it is for the reader to decide if it is murder or witchcraft. Is it the furies exacting revenge or is it murder committed by drug and alcohol addled teens?
The Furies is a book about the powerful and sometimes toxic friendships girls can form in their teenage years.
The Furies is a gripping and well-written story with a brilliant beginning.
“The strange thing, they said, wringing their hands and whispering as though we couldn’t hear, or we weren’t listening through extension phones or cracks in the walls, was that there was no known cause of death.
Inconclusive, they said, as though that changed the face of it, which was this: a sixteen-year-old girl, dead on school property without a single clue to suggest why or how. No unexplained prints on the body, the forensic examination finding no trace of violence nor rape, nor a single fibre that could not be linked to the girl, her friends, or her mother, whom she had hugged for the last time that morning as she left for school. It was as though her heart had simply stopped, her blood stilled in her veins, preserving her forever in a single moment, watchful as the dawn.”
Some of the aspects of the book were a bit chilling to read, I liked that the narrator showed no remorse in adulthood.
“I’m grateful to the voyeurs of the internet, to the stranger who uploaded the crime scene photos decades after the fact. They turn my nerves electric, the memory radiating white hot, clear.
For, despite all that followed – the investigation, the questions, the on-camera tears and plaintive words wailed at drooling reporters – even after all these years I struggle with this one unspeakable truth. I don’t feel bad about what we did. Any of it. Somehow, I can’t…guilt is not the feeling I associate with her death.
Because in the year I knew her and in all the events leading up to her death – her murder. I felt more alive than I ever have before or since.”
The Furies is not a book I will easily forget.
Our Final Rating...
Read & Shared 16 Times.
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