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.