I’ve been a big fan of Wendy Erskine’s short stories and wondered how her talent for creating vivid characters and sharp scenarios would play out in a longer form. Brilliantly, is the short answer.
The Benefactors is a cacophony of voices and characters. It takes a while to work out who is who and how they fit together, but it emerges that these lives are brought together by an 'incident', when three boys who sexually assault Misty, who is from a very different background to them.
Structural and gender inequality is threaded through the stories that emerge, to lesser or larger degrees, but each of Erskine’s characters is brought to life with empathy. It’s a phenomenal read. I’m not mad keen on the cover, but it’s a fantastic portrayal of real lives, legitimised abuse (hello Only F*ns) and human mistakes. I now want to read it all over again. All the stars.

I found this a hard read, not because of the subject matter but because of the way it seems to jump around with no context about where we are or who is there. It's very disjointed and although I enjoyed the writing I felt that it was hard going for most of the time and every time I was involved in what was happening, there was a jump to someone else, another place or whatever. That might just be the way I read, as I maybe read too fast and should slow down, but it seemed difficult to follow for much of the time.

Wendy Erskine’s stories of Belfast bring the reader to places and situations off the beaten track, using vivid and compelling writing.

As a person who favours the short story over the novel, I felt, as in the case of Louise Kennedy, also, that the energy required to write a novel would have been better spent on short stories.

Still, in both cases, the novel attracts more readers and more attention.

ButErskine’s writing is as skilful as ever and many of the characters, especially Misty, are fascinating to follow.

Plotwise, the novel lays out, unhurriedly, the foundations for a sexual assault by three relatively well-off young men on a less-privileged young woman.

Despite the major talent on display, though, the number of characters makes it hard to keep track at times. And the mysterious, short first person interludes by unidentified only compounds this problem.

But the pace intensifies as the book progresses and it’s a very good read overall.

What a brilliant read!
I have read and really liked some of this authors short stories but this is next level. The writing , throughout , is mesmerising and I genuinely could not put this one down. An original take on a story , we know so well after a young woman is sexually assaulted by several of young men at a party.
Despite the subject matter this book is often funny, always razor sharp and genuinely moving. It does demand your attention, there a cast of characters and the narrative switches between them frequently ( I am not sure if it was just the arc that had no demarcation between the narrative perspective or if this is the the style of the book?) but while it did not bother me, it may frustrate some readers.

I loved this- the class divide, the wealth divide, the way the characters parented. The characters were so real. The pacing, the plot, the setting, the dialogue, all so perfectly captured.

I really hope Erskine is already writing her next book, I cannot wait to read it.

4.5-5 stars.

Wonderful. Was big fan of Wendy Erskine's short stories so very much looking forward to this. Has all the character and edge of the stories but with a broader gaze. Only slight drawback was the vast number of characters to try to keep up with.

‘The Benefactors’ is a very clever exploration of why people make the choices and judgements they do alongside why their experiences make them the characters they are. A relatively simple plot – a working class girl presses charges when she is sexually assaulted by three middle class boys at a house party and the boys’ mothers try to exonerate them – is at the centre of Wendy Erskine’s novel. However, Erskine’s use of multiple narratives is far from straightforward and allows the reader to appreciate that snap judgements are seldom wise.

For example, Misty, the girl who is assaulted makes money on Bennyz, a chat room with ‘benefits’. However, she’s not naïve and she’s not taking off her clothes. She knows that, ‘Unless you want to end up with a bunch of old sleazes you shouldn’t call yourself Becki-Lee, Heidi-Kym, Layla, Lacey – or Misty. Right from the beginning she has just wanted a few people who are nice and kind of classy … She calls herself Elizabeth Barrett Browning.’ Funny as well as sad! And Misty was certainly not ‘asking’ to be attacked on the night in question.

Ironically, Frankie, one of the wealthy mothers determined to rescue her son from infamy, was brought up in a children’s home and, in the past, resorted to desperate measures herself as she fought for a better life. And the other women have their issues too.

Misty’s adopted father, her sister and her nan – and even her flaky mother – are just as determined as the three entitled mothers to protect their own in a town where everyone’s business is well-known. How will it all end?

This is a great read which champions the importance of knowing that you are seen and loved. Enthralling, thought-provoking, moving and often funny. Highly recommended.

My thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton, Sceptre for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

I struggled through 'The Benefactors' from beginning to end.

The writing style felt uncomfortable and erratic with the lack of punctuation and unclear movement between multiple perspectives.

I didn't feel anything for the characters and couldn't visualise them or the setting. THE 2* are for the plot, which I thought was the best part of the novel.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.

I enjoyed the first few pages - the characters were intriguing and I was hooked. Then that character was dropped and we moved on to someone else. Fine I thought - I can cope with more than one character. But then it happened again, and again. It may be that the formatting on my early reader copy is not the finished product but some of these switches happened mid paragraph so I was thoroughly discombobulated. I am afraid that I backed away.

I was very enthusiastic about it initially, meeting feisty Frankie who grew up in care and married a wealthy man. But the plot became quite convoluted with several different timelines. The writing became urgent and frantic, probably deliberately, with the story revolving around 3 powerful women defending their sons. I didn't feel as invested as I hoped.

Wendy Erskine's debut novel, following collections of short stories which were extremely well received, has a lot of expectation upon it. The Benefactors tells the story of a young woman subjected to a sexual assault by three boys, whose mother's narrate here. The shifting view points provide distinct voices and styles, even as the narratives begin to overlap in subject matter and events. Erskine keeps tight control of her subjects, and the writing is fantastic. This is a fine debut novel, one that will certainly bring her new fans. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

The Benefactors follows Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh who are all mothers to 18-year-old boys. Frankie grew up in care but is now married to an older man. Miriam lost her husband and Bronagh is the CEO of a children’s services charity. All 3 women’s sons are accused of sexually assaulting, Misty Johnston but Misty has Nan D and her father Boogie looking out for her.

The writing style of this wasn’t great for me. I found it hard to keep up with all the POV’s in this and I just think the idea behind this was better than the story. It just didn’t do much for me. That said, I would recommend this for readers who like this authors other work and people who enjoy Irish novels.
Comment

Anyone who has enjoyed Wendy Erskine's previous short stories from Stinging Fly and Picador will enjoy this more sustained visit to an enigmatic community of very different people. Miriam, Frankie and Bronagh, three women from contrasting backgrounds, face the consequences of their teenage sons' actions at a party, while Misty, the young woman at the centre of it, struggles to find her place in the world after school while her useless mother, devoted stepfather and outrageous Nan D (the standout character of the book - imagine an Irish version of Catherine Tate's Nan character but with even more swearing) attempt to find justice in a system they know to be rigged against them.

Framed by a polyphonic chorus of voices from the neighbourhood, reminiscent of Jon McGregor's 'Even the Dogs,' some of the stories intersect with the lives of the main characters, and some of them are gloriously random. Dry, salty and recognisably grounded in the hinterlands of suburban midlife and adolescence, Wendy Erskine's is certain to be one of the top books of the year.

3* The Benefactors - Wendy Erskine.

The Benefactors has an intriguing plot. Misty has been the subject of a sexual encounter that went beyond her consent at an Air BnB with a group of boys who she has previously spent time with. Misty is the step-daughter of a taxi driver who does his best for the two daughters who were abandoned with him by their errant mother. When Misty reports the incident, the boys mothers, each of who exert a middle-class power band together. Thereafter are layers of parenting, family ties and class.

This book has stunning reviews and I read it quickly. However, I wanted to like it more than I did. The writing was discombobulating and there are a lot of characters, most with a lengthy backstory. The plot is mired in a lot of extraneous detail which jars with the progress of the book. It clearly had a fan base but it wasn’t one for me.

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC.

If Wendy Erksine writes it, I’m pretty certain I’m gonna love it and this was certainly no exception.

As a huge fan of Dance Move and Sweet Home, I was so excited to see The Benefactors appear on Netgalley and even more ecstatic that Hodder & Stoughton let me have early access because waiting until June would have been a killer!

Once you get past the frequent flipping between characters, it’s impossible not to become immersed in the story and Erskine does an incredible job of describing the incident through so many unique perspectives!

I’ll definitely be purchasing a physical copy once it releases and making everyone read it!

Do-Gooders

This is Wendy Erskine’s first novel, following two volumes of short stories, and it’s a cracker!

Three powerful mothers defend their three sons, accused of assaulting a girl, the step-daughter of a working class taxi driver. They have wealth, intelligence and influence on their side. The girl has been raised in the house of man who is not her father, abandoned by her own feckless mother, and she earns a little money meeting older men on the internet through a platform called Benefactors. So far, so simple.

Where this novel is especially successful is in the delineation of character, motivation, and personality. Every character in the novel is a deeply and convincingly constructed individual. In tune with her role as a short story writer, Erskine has continuous sections which focus on individuals who are at best tangential to the plot, often at two or three removes. These episodes provide an eccentric Greek chorus to the central story, and can be curiously both insightful and irritating. For gritty social realism the story hits the target every time.

The mothers, the sons, the girl, her stepfather, his grandmother and the others in their respective family circles, all emerge as personalities about whom we want to learn more. We may hate some of them, be shocked by others, but this is the sort of book where the reader feels a sense of loss when the final sentence is read.

The story has some wonderful comic episodes and is inventive and original throughout. There is much trauma, but there is also a quiet sense of possibility at the end.

This is an amazing novel. You will never have read anything quite like it. I recommend it absolutely.

I’ve been a devoted fan of Wendy's work ever since I first discovered her short story collections, and I can confidently say that her debut novel did not disappoint in the slightest. From start to finish, it captivated me. The absence of traditional chapters was also a brilliant choice, making the narrative flow more seamlessly and giving the book a unique, almost experimental feel. It kept me completely engaged and made the entire experience feel fresh and original.

While I didn’t necessarily connect with many of the characters on a personal level, I found them incredibly compelling and complex. Their flaws and contradictions were so vividly rendered that even when I didn’t like them, I couldn’t look away. Wendy's portrayal of the different social classes in Northern Ireland was also particularly striking. She captured the tensions, struggles, and dynamics with such precision, offering a rich and authentic perspective that’s not often seen in literature.

One character that really stood out to me was Boogie. He’s the kind of character who is rarely given the spotlight in fiction, and Wendy’s treatment of him felt incredibly refreshing. Boogie brought a rawness to the story that I think will resonate with many readers.

This is one of those books that will stick with me for a long time, and I’m already looking forward to recommending it to customers when it’s released in June. Wendy has once again proven herself to be an exceptional writer, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

The premise of this book enthralled me as it was reminiscent of the Belfast rape case. However, I could not get behind the writing and once I got the huge amount of characters sorted in my head, it felt like I was reading pages and pages of minutia before getting to the heart of the matter.

Rape from the point of view of the mothers of the perpetrators is such an interesting concept but I didn't fine the way this was executed interesting at all.

Way too much back story.

In my review of Wendy Erskine’s debut short-story collection “Sweet Home” (2018), I tried to describe what I saw as her signature technique as “what is unspoken or at best gradually acknowledged, to create in the reader an empathetic reaction to the character’s behavior when viewed in the context of their past (a past, often hinging in a single event, which leads to a feeling of exclusion or loss)” and further went on to say that one of the characters (when discussing a fictionally famously obscure pop star’s – Gil Courtney’s - music) inadvertently gave a perfect review of what the author herself achieves: “It just, what it does is, it just – penetrates to the heart of what it means to be lonely, or in love or to feel a failure … a total affirmation of what it is to be alive …. There’s warmth there and there’s strangeness there”

And I felt both conclusions were as true of her second collection “Dance Moves” (2022) and In an interview post that collection novel when asked to describe her own style, the author rather brilliantly said “I remain, stylistically, a stick of seaside rock with HUMANE and SLEAZY running through it, top to bottom.”

This is her debut novel – to be published later in 2025 – and I am delighted to say that it has everything that make her short story collections so strong and which I think is captured in the comments (be me, by her character and by the author) above, while also being a really impressive, expansive and engrossing novel in its own right (this is very much not a drawn out short story).

The set up of the novel is simply explained. Set like most of her writing predominantly in Belfast (and also in this case in an, I think fictional, rich enclave on its outskirts) we meet in turn three relatively privileged mothers of 18 year old boys, friends on the verge of starting university.

Frankie – from a children’s home background, but who uses her carefully cultivated glamour to marry an older man who made his fortune in compression software (and who she first dated when she worked on a private airline and his wife was dying) and her stepson Chris.

Bronagh – the daughter of two GPs and now hands-on CEO and fundraiser for an increasingly well known children’s charity and her son Lyness (Line Up).

Miriam – in mourning for her husband (a Coptic Egyptian) who recently died in a car crash (with an unexplained young female passenger) and her son Rami.

The three boys at a party in an Airbnb have a sexual encounter with a girl Misty (who sometimes supplies drugs to them and their friends) – an encounter which goes from consensual to non-consensual and which afterwards she decides to report to the police (partly due to the arrogant assumption of the boys that she won’t).

Misty herself works in a hotel but also in her bedroom on the titular Benefactors (Bennyz) where subscribers can talk to her (and more). Her father (her mother having dumped her and her younger sister with him many years after they broke up) Boogie is a taxi driver.

The story flows as a third-party point of view between the different characters – mainly Misty, Boogie and the three mothers, both leading up to the night and then after as its repercussions play out.

The two key themes of the novel for me (both portrayed in a natural rather than heavy handed way) are: parenting – what responsibilities do you have to your own child, but also what do you have to other people and their children; and class/privilege – social and economic.

There are so many really well-done scenes – ones where I think the author’s short story skills come to the fore in the ability to use an interaction to sketch so much of a character’s life and personality.

Just a few that come to mind as I wrote this review:

Frankie’s interactions in a children’s home with another girl and soon friend Michelle (and as an aside how pleased are we that unlike Michelle Wendy Erskine is very “interested in back story sobstory gobstory”); Rami’s desperately ashamed and embarrassed confession to his Mum Miriam of his role in the assault; Bronagh’s first meetings with Frankie and then with Frankie and Miriam, with her perhaps nervous garrulousness unmatched and effectively rebuffed by the others; a poignant encounter between Bronagh and man on an airplane (poignant as much for how a largely one way conversation stays with her later); Misty’s Bennyx chats with an American customer Mike; Misty’s interview at a funeral parlour; Miriam’s trips to a sports shop to look at the mannequins – and the desperately sad reason why she does it, and later her meeting with the girl who was in the car crash; Bronagh’s reckoning with Lyness..

And another really distinguishing feature – one which makes me think the author could if she wished very easily excel in flash fiction as well as short stories and novels – is the polyphonic addition to the text of some 50 (I think – I may have miscounted) half to three page first party vignettes from a variety of different, unnamed, characters directly, indirectly or tangentially linked to the main characters and the incidents of the novel (just one example – the unofficial property manager for the Airbnb) – which together really give the novel pacing and a sense of collective community.

There is also some really nice humour to the novel – Boogie’s paternal grandmother Nan D is a scene stealer, particularly in her comments on and later interactions with Leigh (Misty’s largely absent mother).

And as a writer who is so skilled at creating characters that draw in a reader; it’s also simply a real pleasure to be able to stay with those characters for more pages in this longer form.

At one point Boogie says of passengers in his cab

Sometimes though nothing's said at all and there's a sadness, nothing made explicit but it's there, a crazy melancholy that stays when they get out which means that sometimes, even in the rain, he needs to open a window to let it disappear

And this same melancholy infuses the novel I think alongside the humour – but unlike Boogie I did not want to open the window and let it disappear but felt somewhat bereft when the novel ended.

Highly recommended.

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.