Fury

A Memoir

By: Koren Zailckas

Narrated by: Koren Zailckas

Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

The author of the iconic New York Times best seller Smashed undertakes a quest to confront her own anger.

In the years following the publication of her landmark memoir, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, Koren Zailckas stays sober and relegates binge drinking to her past. But a psychological legacy of repression lingers - her sobriety is a loose surface layer atop a hard- packed, unacknowledged rage that wreaks havoc on Koren emotionally and professionally.

When a failed relationship leads Koren back to her childhood home, she sinks into emotional crisis - writer's block, depression, anxiety. Only when she begins to apply her research on a book about anger to the turmoil of her own life does she learn what denial has cost her. The result is a blisteringly honest chronicle of the consequences of anger displaced and the balm of anger discovered. Listeners who recognized themselves or someone they loved in Smashed will identify with Koren's life-altering exploration and the necessity of exposing anger's origins in order to flourish in love and life as an adult. Combining sophisticated sociological research with a dramatic and deeply personal story that grapples boldly with identity and family, Fury is a dazzling work by a young writer at the height of her powers that is certain to touch a cultural nerve.

Also listen to Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood .

©2010 Koren Zailckas (P)2010 Penguin Audio

The Second Half is Way Better than the First

What did you like best about Fury? What did you like least?

When Koren got real and actually started telling her story rather than dancing around it with disjointed stories and ill-placed academic quotes.

What other book might you compare Fury to and why?

I liked Koren's first book, Smashed, a lot. This one is different, and at first I was really disappointed, but it got better as I kept listening.

Any additional comments?

I really didn’t like this book at first, it was super scattered and nearly incoherent with a lot of extraneous quoting. She spent a lot of time talking about how hard it was to write the book, and I almost stopped listening because it was all actually somewhat annoying. But about halfway through, it seemed to really shift into a different style of narration. I think Koren shifted in her life as she was writing, and her story got a lot easier to follow and relate to from there.

Difficult read.

I have listened to a lot of books on Audible and have never left a detailed review.
However I felt compelled to describe my experience with this book Fury. It was a difficult read. I can see why it took her 4 years to complete it. The story could have been much shorter. It was long and drawn out, constantly interrupted by unnecessary citations. Her descriptions were over wordy-excessively detailed almost to the point of distraction. I read her boomed smashed really quick because it was quite engaging. She wrote it in four months. If Fury was the first book that I read from Korin, I would not have read anymore of her books. The story is quite interesting as it details the conflicts she experienced with herself, her sister, mother, father and partner. I must say that is the reason why I kept reading. All the other information that she packs in the book could have been left out. I might read her other book. Mother, Mother. Although, I am quite hesitant to encounter a book that detours away from the main story to often drags on.