The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine: book review
The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
Overview: Going by the summary on the back of the book, this is a story about three Belfast mothers who are brought together by each of their sons being accused of sexual assault by the same girl after an incident at a houseparty. While this is certainly one component of the book, I question if it is truly the heart of the book. Clearly, though, this is a hard book to boil down to its plot because the happenings of the book are somewhat irrelevant. I guess I would call this a book about four Belfast families with voices incorporated from every inch this story reaches. It is a book that addresses the realities of sexual assault and reporting a case, but it is also a book about grief, about family and the many unconventional forms it can take, about how perspective is warped and ideals are lost. It is, maybe, mostly, a book about parental love and how complicated that can be. Overall: 4.5This is a difficult book to pin down. It’s brilliant, but it’s also for a very particular type of reader, one willing to follow a long, dark rabbit hole without needing even an inkling of the light on the other side. I think it’s telling this book has so many flashy blurb ranging from Colin Barrett to Sheena Patel to Colin Walsh. Beyond that Wendy Erskine has established herself in the Irish literary scene as an accomplished short story writer, she’s written a debut novel that feels very much like a writer’s novel. This is a book that offers its satisfaction in greater measure if you’re looking for extraordinary richness in character, experimentation in form, and a sense of play in language. If you’re just looking to be told a story, this would be a mildly infuriating reading experience.
I picked up the book on the back of the general buzz around it when it came out. The feature by the stinging fly, the blurbs, seeing it pushed in all the bookstores, the fact that Wendy Erskine wrote it. It stuck out in my mind as a major book of the year, though that’s owing to my very particular bubble. I mentioned to a friend I wanted to read it while we were in a bookshop, and she read the blurb aloud and found it bleak. I agreed. I didn’t know that’s what it was about. So I waited for my library hold to come in many months later.
As I started reading, I knew the summary was letting down major swaths of what the novel is. For the first seventy pages, we start every chapter (or, really, small section) with a new character. We spend anywhere from half a page to five or six with them before moving right along. We’re thrown into their present lives, their backstories with no indication of where we’re going or how it will all fit together. The party and the reporting of the sexual assault doesn’t happen until around 140 pages in. It is a catalyst point, but it is far from the book, to its benefit.
Erskine demands a high degree of trust and patience from the reader, but it isn’t unearned, both in the final picture you leave with and in the prose itself. I found myself sometimes casually wondering where we were going, but the pieced together vignettes from these characters lives were fascinating and so deeply rich from their many openings. I decided I was somewhat content to just keep reading about different people from around Belfast the entire book. The prose is gorgeous, the depth is amazing. We’re never told whose perspective we’re in, and sometimes I never did figure it out since she does seem to have a pension for hopping into the heads of even the most secondary characters from time to time, but on the whole, their voices are so distinct, it’s instinctual to discern. The prose is like candy in the most brainy, intellectual way, and the emotional depth and complexity is immense.
I will say, the only stumble I could find was that Misty, the teenage girl at the heart of this novel (which props to Erskine for being able to write a teenage voice both accurately and respectfully, that hasn’t been true of all the novels I’ve picked up this year), chats with this middle aged man, from all places, Wyoming. And for one tiny snatch of the book, we hear from him. I’m sorry to report he still sounded very Irish with some random very typically American phrases thrown in that we don’t really use in Wyoming. It’s such a small, random nitpick that somehow Erskine went for the world’s most forgotten state, which also happens to be where I’m from. Really, it just made me laugh. But that’s how far reaching the book gets at times, and yet it’s all held so tightly together.
While highly fragmented, there are major through-lines. One of the mothers grapples with what it means to be a stepmother and what it means to have married for money and greatly changed her class situation. One is forced to finally confront the way she’s babied her son into becoming a monster, and she’s so full of excuses, you wonder if she’ll ever be able to see it. The last mother is steeped in grief after losing her husband in an accident, and she struggles to see beyond this as everyone around her struggles. On Misty’s side, we see her, I guess kind of step-father, navigate having two kids left on his doorstep in his early twenties and learn how to be a dad without much in a way of role model parents. And despite expectations, he leads with such a lovely, pure love that gives a much needed relief to a novel that doesn’t flinch from difficult subjects.
It is a book that rewards patience, that rewards reading with an open mind and being ready to embrace whatever’s thrown your way. If you’re looking for a straightforward novel, need lots of context from the start, or need neatly tied endings, you will hate this book. Fair warning. But if you like the idea of what I’ve described, I highly recommend spending some time with The Benefactors.
If you need more convincing, I got the library loan four days before I had to leave for winter break, and I was so hooked, I bought a copy from the bookshop (at wildly high new release sticker price) so I could finish it on the plane.
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