REVIEW

Review - UNRAVELLING OLIVER, Liz Nugent

Reviewed By
Karen Chisholm

If you ever need to sum up UNRAVELLING OLIVER by Liz Nugent in one word then mesmerising is it. It starts out with the serious assault of Alice by her husband Oliver Ryan and then steps back through the previous five decades, charting the events in Oliver’s life leading up to the assault. The narrative switches from Oliver to other people he has spent time with over the years, and it carefully and very cleverly builds a story of the real Oliver and why he is who he is, why he did what he did. There is also geographical variation with many of the pivotal events in their lives happening in France, whereas day to day life, and the crime occur in Ireland.

There’s a claustrophobic, intense feeling to this style of narrative, as Oliver’s facade is laid bare, carefully and forensically. In a style that’s almost deceptively gentle, there’s a deliberation to the way that friends and family all step up to tell their part of this man’s sorry story each in turn, each twisting the knife a further turn.

Not that Oliver does not deserve skewering. His assault on his wife, as described in the opening pages of the book is shocking, vicious and seemingly utterly without regret. The mesmerising manner in which Liz Nugent does that cannot be understated. The assured narrative, the way that the cast of characters become so real in such short sharp chapters, the sense that you’re being given an opportunity to understand that great question of crime fiction - why, in such detail, all combine to create something extremely satisfying in UNRAVELLING OLIVER.

BOOK DETAILS
BOOK INFORMATION
Author
ISBN
9781844883097
Year of Publication
BLURB

Oliver Ryan is a handsome and charismatic success story. He lives in the suburbs with his wife, Alice, who illustrates his award-winning children's books and gives him her unstinting devotion. Their life together is one of enviable privilege and ease - enviable until, one evening after supper, Oliver attacks Alice and beats her into a coma.

In the aftermath, as everyone tries to make sense of his astonishing act of savagery, Oliver tells his story. So do those whose paths he has crossed over five decades. What unfolds is a story of shame, envy, breath-taking deception and masterful manipulation.

Only Oliver knows the lengths to which he has had to go to get the life to which he felt entitled. But even he is in for a shock when the past catches up with him.

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Tuesday, October 20, 2015
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