FROM THE COVER📖

In The Benefactors we meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh - very different women but all mothers to 18-year-old boys. Glamorous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children's services charity, loves the celebrity and prestige this brings her. They do not know each other yet, but when their sons are accused of sexually assaulting Misty Johnston, whose family lacks the wealth and social-standing of their own, they'll leverage all the power of their position to protect their children.


From the prize-winning author of Dance Move and Sweet Home, this is an astounding novel about intimate histories, class and money - and what being a parent means. Brutal, tender and rigorously intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, polyphonic presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland. It is also very funny.

REVIEW ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Having read a lot works from Irish writers this year I can honestly say that this is among the best I've read it's right up there with the most established of Irish works.
I adored Erskine's short works Dance Move so was really excited to see what she could do with a novel as is with her short stories she captures modern day Belfast perfectly.

In the simplest of terms the plot is the fall out of a young girl who is assaulted by a group of boys she thought were her friends, the girl being Misty comes from a normal working class family and the boys coming from over privileged indulgent backgrounds.

Taking the view and narrative from the victim and her family, the perpetrators and their families, employers, acquaintances, colleagues some from bit players in Misty’s story, others apparently random often slotting into the story later we follow the fall out and impact the attack has on the wider community. Hearing peoples own stories that leads to their take on Misty's story. Told in short paragraphs of observations from each person sometimes only once and multiply times for others the narrative expertly uses dark humour to explore class, privilege and consent within a non traditional layout/structure . The voices are disembodied / unattributed and together they create a brilliant portrait of wider society through deeply layered characters. I found Frankie was the characters I liked to hear most from, I found the similarities between her Misty were subtly drawn on and the little nuances that made them vastly different at the same time worked really well, it made for complex thought provoking reading.

The narrative slips from character to character, layering back stories which bring each of them vividly to life in all their complexity. Erskine's writing style can feel at first a little disjointed and all over the place but as the novel progress this style works masterfully to create a deeply rich novel full of depth and shows writing of a different class. The chatty tone and dark humour though out add a sense of realism in this highly recommend elegantly constructed, thoughtful and absorbing novel which ends on a note of hope with a kind of justice having been done.

Class act from start to finish I couldn't put it done. The seemly simple of the surface but deeply enriched and complex below. Five stars all the way.

I really liekd this. The story was so beaitifully told, and I felt a real kinship to the characters. It was quite emotional in places.

Boogie had been only eighteen when their rackety mother left her two daughters with him but proved himself up to the task of raising them both, never distinguishing between Misty and his biological child. Misty works in a classy hotel, harbouring a fancy for Chris the son of one of the city’s richest men When he invites her to a party in an abandoned house with Lyness and Rami, she’s happy to have been picked out. The evening ends badly for Misty. When she reports the rape to the police, the machinery of privilege and influence swings into action.
Wendy Erskine threads short paragraphs of observations through her narrative, some from bit players in Misty’s story, others apparently random often slotting into the story later. It’s a style that feels a little disjointed at first, but it adds depth to this richly textured novel which explores class, privilege and consent through Misty, her family and the families of the three young men who rape her. The narrative slips from character to character, layering back stories which bring each of them vividly to life in all their complexity. Expectations raised high by Erskine’s short stories were surpassed by this elegantly constructed, thoughtful and absorbing novel which ends on a note of hope with a kind of justice having been done.

There's a simple plot at the heart of this book. A young woman from an imperfect background is assaulted by three young men from relative degrees of privilege. It's approached from almost every possible angle - the victim and her family, the perpetrators and their families, employers, acquaintances, colleagues and a lonely American man on the internet. These layers create unexpected pockets of empathy in places and in others the characters hoist themselves by their own petards - Bronagh is a masterful creation of hypocrisy. Lots of the voices are disembodied / unattributed and together they create a brilliant portrait of contemporary Belfast. I don't know if it was a formatting issue or a stylistic device that meant that different narrative viewpoints often continued within the same paragraph. I love polyphonic novels like this and it's SO well done but the run-on text occasionally pulled me out of the immersive reading experience which was a shame.