I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I found it beautifully written, filled with eloquent, often innovative prose. The descriptions are amazingly vibrant. Time and again, I was drawn intimately into time and place, could picture every scene in graphic detail. Likewise, the characters’ emotions are presented in great depth and with the ring of truth.

My problem? Those emotions are dark. The characters are self-absorbed, egotistical people often driven to do bad things. The husband’s story is so slow at times that I might have given up if other reviewers hadn’t advised of good things to come with the wife’s story. And there are some interesting twists in “he said, she said” moments that are revealed to the reader only when the wife’s story unfolds. Toward the end of the book, something actually happened that I hadn’t seen coming. I gasped aloud, drawing the attention of others in the waiting room where I sat. That moment was the most fun I had listening to what was otherwise a painfully sad book.

Fates and Furies was an Indie Next pick for October, so I’m glad I read it. As a writer, I was definitely inspired by the prose. Do I feel uplifted as a reader? No. That said, the farther from the book and its agonizingly lengthy detail I get, the more interesting I find the story.