The Furies by Fernanda Eberstadt
Gwen and Gideon are madly, passionately, head over heels in love.  They are a mismatch convinced they fit together beautifully.  Is their story a sweet fairytale or are they doomed star-crossed lovers?

It is New York City in the 1990's.  She is a trust fund baby, a WASP, a career girl.  He is penniless, a Jew, a performance artist.  She runs an agency devoted to democratizing post-Communist Russia .  He runs a politically minded puppet theater striving against capitalism.  They meet by chance in Russia .  They meet again in New York .  She is involved with someone else but can't get him out of her head.  They become lovers and cannot get enough of each other.

Love can be so uncomplicated when there are no strings attached.  They share late passionate nights and lazy weekends.  They cocoon together oblivious to the outside world.  They spend their free time in a cozy land of two, healing each others childhood wounds, understanding each others unspoken needs.

Then Gwen becomes pregnant.  It's not what they planned, especially Gwen.  Yet they are in love and in their 30's.  They should get married and have the baby.  Gwen and Gideon have not integrated each other into their separate lives outside their love nest.  They've been secretive, secluded.  Is it because they selfishly don't want to share their lover with others or is it more?  Gwen's loved ones are sophisticated, moneyed, educated.  Then there is Gideon's makeshift family of earthy-crunchy, free-spirited, starving artists and activists.  Will each group approve of the match?

The baby comes, and it is no longer two, but three.  Gwen is consumed with motherhood.  There isn't room left for anything else.  Never has she felt a love so fierce, yet so incredibly demanding.  She is shocked by it.  She is a martyr sacrificing her wants and needs for her child.  Gideon is feeling squeezed out.  Nothing he does is good enough.  He loves his daughter dearly, but he is bewildered about what has happened to his adoring wife.  Where is the support and tenderness she used to show him?  Why is he suddenly not ambitious enough, not responsible enough, not helpful enough?  He is useless!

As the pressures of motherhood envelope Gwen, she begins to wonder why she fell in love with Gideon.  Was he truly her soul mate or perhaps a way to spite her father?  Now she is stuck financially supporting her growing family with a dwindling inheritance, a modest salary by Manhattan standards, and a husband without a steady paycheck.

Their relationship is dissolving, spiraling downward.  Gideon is feeling unwanted and ashamed of succumbing to a materialistic life.  Gwen is feeling overwhelmed and self-righteous.  How can two people who loved each other so passionately start hurting each other so badly?  There's a thin line between love and hate, and their marriage teeters in the balance.  Will they be able to find their way back to happiness or is their love destined to end tragically?

The Furies is an epic story.  You feel their love.  You feel their pain.  You feel their sorrow.  The characters are interesting and deep, and the writing is intelligent and unique.

About the author:  New York City and was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford.  She presently lives in the French Pyrenees with her husband and two children.

The Furies by Fernanda Eberstadt