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The four generations of women described in Janet Hobhouse's autobiographical novel rival the Furies of Greek myth in their capacity to love and hate with vengeance. At the heart of the story is a mother/daughter conflict that is at moments an innocent love affair between romantic co-conspirators and at others a bitter and deforming contest of wills.

Hobhouse, who died of ovarian cancer while writing The Furies, takes on the irresolvability of this struggle between safety and liberty, loyalty and defiance, and in what amounts to her last words -- told in a voice of unforgettable immediacy -- finds that the quest for understanding can itself be a form of letting go. -- from New York Review of Books

Hobhouse draws freely on her personal story to create this mesmerizing, unforgettable novel.

She tells this increasingly dark story in graceful, assured, often eloquent prose animated by keen, witty observations and illuminated by her laser eye for social conventions and character foibles. Her style is old-fashioned in the best sense: dense with descriptive detail and psychological insight, both in the service of multilayered character delineation. That Hobhouse in effect foreshadowed her own death makes the novel even more poignant and affecting. -- from Publisher's Weekly

From the 1st edition uncorrected proof.Click here.

Finding The Furies will always seem a part of Stone Reader, and in some ways the novel parallels The Stones of Summer. I think of it as a bookend, on the other side of the case, with much of the generation that ran from Mossman to Hobhouse somewhere in-between.

I stayed at the Tribeca Grand, where the conference was held. Those weeks the streets lay empty of vehicles south of Canal Street. No traffic. One night I walked eight blocks in Tribeca without seeing another person, like a scene from The Third Man. Dust coated everything, doorways loomed vacant, unlit, dark. The glow of the giant lights where the wreckage workers worked all night silhouetted the view south.

A week or so after 9/11/01, I traveled to New York to attend the IFP’s No Borders Conference. I had never been to a film festival or movie industry event before, didn’t know what happened, and relied on two associates, Jessica Shamash and Robert Goodman, for tips on what to do. I was there because Robert had suggested we submit the project I was working on, something about books

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NYRB: The Furies, by Janet Hobhouse

Rutgers University Library: Special Collections