A review by beautifulpaxielreads
Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez

challenging dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Lies have short legs.

What a big-hearted roar of a novel this is.

In Furia, Yamile Saied Méndez skilfully and explosively explores the intersection between misogyny and football (soccer as we know it in Australia, fútbol in Spanish) that exists in Argentina.

On the pitch playing for her women's team, Camila is the fearless, brilliant "La Furia". Off the pitch, however, life is a bit more complicated. As well as the very real threat she faces just by walking home after dark, she has to deal with her overbearing, bullying father, her kind but cynical mother, and her elder brother Pablo, whose career in the professional men's league feels like a shadow she can't escape from under.

Then there's Diego, her childhood sweetheart - who has returned home for a visit after a dazzling career and international fame at the Juventus club in Italy.  Now that he's back, he wants to pick up where he and Camila left off - but does she feel the same?

I'll confess that at first, I had a hard time getting into this one. There are a lot of Spanish words and phrases sprinkled throughout Furia, and I constantly felt the need to go and look up anything I didn't understand. But after a while, I let this urge go (mostly) and my reading experience was so much better for it.

I learned so much from reading this book. Firstly, I had no idea how multicultural Argentina was - Camila herself is of mixed Palestinian, Spanish, and Eastern European heritage (much like the author herself), and other characters are of Chinese and Indian ethnicity - and there are probably others which I don't remember. And the sense of place you get - as well as the Spanish language intermixing that I already mentioned - is really well done.

I had heard that gender-based violence (and murder) is a huge problem across Latin America (as it is in many other parts of the world), and it is in depicting this issue (and the attitudes enabling it) that Saied Méndez really excels. From casual misogyny to systemic, from domestic violence to
the murder of a young girl
, it's all here - and I appreciate that the author didn't shy away from the topic but confronted it head-on.

Diego was a sweetheart, and the way Saied Méndez writes him, it is easy to see why Camila
falls for him all over again
. He's effortlessly charming, down-to-earth, and caring. I was thinking that maybe he was a little too perfect, but towards the end of the novel, when
he revealed that he had come back to take Camila back with him to Italy
made him a bit more realistic to me.

Furia is a novel that wears its heart on the sleeve of a  fútbol jersey - and that's a good thing.
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