The Furies by Katie Lowe

Author: Katie Lowe

Title: The Furies 

Publisher: Harper Collins 

Published: 2019

Pages: 384

Genre: Horror Thriller 

     IT’S 1997. VIOLET IS A NEW STUDENT AT ELM HOLLOW ACADEMY AND DESPERATE TO FIT IN. Quiet, artistic, unremarkable. When invited to an advanced study group by her alluring art teacher, Annabel, she is at once terrified and delighted. There she meets Robin, Grace, and Alex: charismatic outsiders who invite her into their clique. But once the study sessions on the school’s history of seventeenth-century witchcraft and magic become more than just theory, Violet must decide what she’s prepared to do in order to stay popular. And maybe she’ll solve the mystery of what happened to a former member of their group. The one who went missing.

      I seem to be on a bit of a run of stories featuring witches of late. It is an interesting subgenre that seems to squeeze its way into many others. From historical fiction to horror and crime thriller they seem to fit in just fine anywhere. The one thing that is usually present more often than not is teenage girls. Because after all there is nothing more threatening to middle-aged men than a girl who will not do as she is told. Something that seems to be ever more present in certain corners of the world today. And is after all a story that goes all the way back to the actual witch trials. These tales at their core would appear to be for the most part tales of empowerment, teenagers coming into their own and finding their place in the world. But also cautionary tales of how power can corrupt in the blink of an eye. It is this duality that probably makes them endure to this day. And as they make for some fascinating stories and because for the most part, they are not found in abundance they make for a good escape and just a little bit of those cold fingers up the back of your spine. It is a good combination for some nighttime reading.

     Violet like so many others we have read about is the new girl in school, nothing is quite so terrifying as to have to start again and work out your place in the social pecking order. I guess you either shine bright and aim for the top or curl up and make yourself very small and unnoticeable. But for Violet, the latter was not going to be an option once her teacher took an interest. It became obvious fairly quickly that our dear hero is swimming in waters a little too deep for her feet to touch the bottom. The need to fit in can be a powerful motivator and lead you to do things that you might otherwise have never considered. But our teenage years can be tricky to navigate and anything that stops us from being the one to stick out from the group seems at least in the moment to be the better of two options.  Lowes's heroes seem to have been so effortlessly crafted to fulfill these roles. Each exudes those heady combinations of hormones and the fire and fury of teenage years. It becomes so easy for things to turn nasty over the smallest of misunderstandings. Although within the world of the Furies small is relative and much bigger stakes would seem to be at play for these girls. But the author manages to balance the other world with that of the teenage experience that is all too familiar to me you and everyone else who has gone through puberty. 

     The Furies is a tale that quite quickly works its way under your skin and pulls you kicking and screaming into its dark and toxic world. The author has given us a tale of what happens when teenage friendships turn in on themselves.  Almost Shakespearian in its rise and fall of the heroes as they each vie for power and control within their tight little circle. Maybe things might have been easier, if not for a certain teacher pushing them to become empowered through the occult. It ramps up the power dynamics and for that matter the paranoia they are suffering. After all, it's bad enough to fight with your so-called friends but if you believe they can come after you with something from the other side, well then you truly have nowhere to hide. Lowe uses it to such great effect within these pages, having clearly spent a great deal of time working out all the kinks. Her tale comes across as so personal and evocative of a time and place that at once seem to have been lost to time but at the same time themes which are universal and no doubt continue on well after we are all gone. I guess the teenage year can be pretty rough on us all as she shows here even without the more supernatural elements. They just work as a sort of manifestation of when at the age we wish we could be capable of, in part to maybe grasp back some sort of control over our lives. 

     For those of us of a certain age, it is very easy to compare this to the original version of the film The Craft. whilst set in the U.S. and not in England it carries many of the same traits and themes. Girls find forbidden knowledge followed by massive highs then lows as things turn ugly. But Lowe manages to clearly make her own unique tale here. At its heart, it is a claustrophobic story of what can happen when things go terribly wrong within friendships. All wrapped up in this outer casing of horror that is deeply embedded within the real world.  I look forward to my next encounter with this author.