Just joined Netgalley. Our Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent (out March 2020) is the first book they’ve given me to read as a pdf and feedback to them. Penguin Random House UK publish Liz Nugent, and also, I’ve just discovered, Nikita Lalwani, a great writer and one of my tutors at Oxford Brookes. I’ve just asked for a copy of her latest, due out in April. Watch this space. It’s about the state of Britain today and promises to be a stinger.
It’s all about genres, this Netgalley foraging. Both the Liz Nugent and Lalwani books are Adult Fiction (General), which in itself is interesting. I’d have thought Lalwani would be writing Literary Fiction. The Liz Nugent book is in the sub-genre of Mystery, Thriller.
Our Little Cruelties: It’s addictive. You just can’t stop reading. I kept trying to figure out how she does it, because the style, the diction, is so plain, it’s almost like reading a statement taken by the police. People ‘depart’ in taxis and have a ‘hiatus’ in film production. A character ‘accompanies’ another character on a tour of America. But you can’t stop reading about the horrible Drumm family. The magnificently horrific fading singer-slash-actress mother, the self-obsessed brothers, the put-upon father, the settled-for wife, the daughter-slash-neice with the inevitable eating disorders. If you’ve ever researched about narcissists and the abuse they mete out, here’s a textbook example of a narcissistic mother and the way that abuse plays out in her three sons, each entirely different from the other.
There’s one big hook: the book opens at the funeral of one of the three brothers, narrated by another brother. Right to the end, you don’t know which will be the dead brother, although I would cheerfully have finished all three of them off at various points myself. It works brilliantly as a hook to keep you invested in the story, and the pace of the telling — which is helped by the plainness of the style — also keeps you invested. One of the brothers is in films and is working direct from Weinstein’s play book. Another’s in the shadows and milking older and younger brothers for all he can. The last is a troubled boy with his mother’s singing talent and a strange religious obsession. The text weaves in and out of chronological time and from each brother’s perspective. This was a tricky thing to do, but the author pulls it off. I kept trying to find some kind of key or governing principle to the way the story darted between decades, but there wasn’t one really. What might have been repetitious backstory was always intriguing for what each brother noticed or failed to notice about the others’ experiences of key events, from a star turn by the mother at the Pope’s visit to Phoenix Park, to younger brother’s debut turn at a big rock venue. Some lovely touches, particularly on class sensitivities in Irish society, in what was sometimes rather two-dimensional characterisation. The snobby Mum’s relatives who sold bleach and toilet paper at the market, much to her shame, had the ring of truth to it. The five bedroom house, big enough for her ego, but not big enough to allow the boys to have parties in. Mum had the use of three bedrooms: one for her wardrobe, another for her piano, the third for sleeping. Leaving only two to be shared between three boys.
A damn good read, but not an author I would go to for lipsmackingly evocative or thought-provoking writing. Thanks to Penguin Random House UK and Netgalley for the chance to taste the book pre-publication.
Izzy Brown 