Irish Examiner review by Kevin O’Sullivan
Liz Nugent hits her stride with fifth novel Strange Sally Diamond
This is her most elusive, most mysterious novel yet, one that poses a myriad of tantalising questions. There are no throwaway lines here, everything counts in the end.
Kevin O’Sullivan
March 11th 2023
Liz Nugent’s fifth novel Strange Sally Diamond showcases a writer who has really hit her stride. This nuanced, perceptive, thrilling and unpredictable book may be her best yet.
Since her 2013 debut Unraveling Oliver she has confronted human behaviour at its most venal, most selfish. All her novels are constructed with extreme care. She is adept at withholding crucial information until she believes revelation to be dramatically necessary.
This is her most elusive, most mysterious novel yet, one that poses a myriad of tantalising questions. There are no throwaway lines here, everything counts in the end. This is careful, meticulous, painstaking. The truth emerges slowly, tensely, incrementally.
Her writing is attracted to the sinister, the seedy, the cynical. The characters are typically obsessed with self-preservation and self-advancement at any cost, completely oblivious to the collateral damage that will almost inevitably ensue.
Sally Diamond — the first of two narrators here — is different though. She is not so much unreliable as eccentric — “strange “. With characteristic subtlety Nugent explores how her unusual personality is rooted in the horrors of her childhood. She is a fascinating, even magnetic character — endearing yet exasperating, well-intentioned yet still potentially dangerous.
There is some superb — and very Irish — black comedy arising from the fact that she is astonishingly literal-minded, utterly oblivious to irony and sarcasm. For a long time she happily persists with the belief that people always say what they mean and mean what they say. She has always felt “emotionally disconnected “ but one of the novel’s few uplifting arcs sees her move (shakily) towards some kind of connection. She remains prone to blithe pronouncements like “if you tell the truth nothing bad can happen to you”. In the context of this novel that is an absurdly optimistic proposition.
A far less optimistic character is the novel's second narrator, Peter. He is the kidnapper’s son who tragically turns into a version of his father in many ways. He is both victim and villain, damaged beyond repair by what he has seen. His narrative is deceptive — appears to be confessional but is ultimately an exercise in self-justification. We immediately intuit that his world will eventually collide with Sally’s. When they finally meet it is handled deftly and subtly.
This is undeniably a harrowing, emotionally draining novel. There are chilling echoes of Emma Donoghue’s Room and John Fowles’ The Collector here. Nugent explores the awful consequences of a horrendous kidnapping, a tortuous, violent captivity.
While she describes human behaviour at its nadir, there remains that defiant black humour, that laughter in the dark. She has established her own idiosyncratic style, and it works beautifully here. She has again created compelling monsters-they are expertly, sensitively, wryly drawn.
Sally is the most compelling character here though, and she is clearly no monster. When she begins to blossom as a person, the tone of the novel noticeably changes. She becomes more optimistic, the world appears more benign, life gets easier.
Sally emerges as something of a Eleanor Oliphant and — surprisingly and briefly — a romance looks a possibility. The novel appears to have radically changed course. Nugent is again playing with expectations though. She lets the light in and dangles possibilities of happiness and fulfilment. The darkness is still there though — lurking.
Strange Sally Diamond
Liz Nugent
Sandycove, €18
L