Unravelling Oliver By Liz Nugent

[amazon_link id=”1844883094″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]’Unravelling Oliver’ is Irish author, Liz Nugent’s debut novel.

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.

‘Unravelling Oliver’ was a book that wholeheartedly consumed me from the first page. I was attending a Q&A with the author and I wanted to have the book read in time and as it’s quite a compact story at 220 pages, I delved straight into the bleak and twisted world of Oliver Ryan.

The start of the book has quite a shocking introduction, as it starts with a frank account of Oliver’s perspective of hitting his wife, Alice and how he expected more of reaction the first time he hit her. Honest and gripping, the story then follows the path of Oliver’s life to the exact moment when he strikes Alice.

Each chapter is written almost as a monologue, as different people give various accounts of meeting Oliver in their lives. They reflect their thoughts of this openly charismatic man that women lust after and men quietly admire. As pointed out by another reader of the book, you could certainly see this book being adapted for stage, as Liz has previously written for theatre and I did imagine that at the end of each chapter, the light would fade to black and then a new character would step into the lit stage to tell their story.

Oliver is a complex character, one side of him is a little boy longing to be loved and accepted and other side is terribly jealous and bitter towards others who have succeeded in the places, that he feels that he has failed. Try as he might to do things right, he leaves a path of destruction unknown to others behind him. As the story develops, I found myself torn between feeling sympathy towards Oliver to anger and shock at his utter lack of humanity and sensitivity towards others.

‘Unravelling Oliver’ is a powerful debut that strikes a chord, with strong voices and a complicated progatost that yearns to be loved, Liz Nugent has successfully written a dark and thrilling story that stays with the reader long after they finished the book.

You can buy [amazon_link id=”1844883094″ target=”_blank” ]Unravelling Oliver from Amazon [/amazon_link] and is available to buy from good bookshops.