Nesting: A Novel

“the plot and writing are so powerful that a reader has to step away every now and then, just to breathe.”

Nesting is one of those rare novels where the plot and writing are so powerful that a reader has to step away every now and then, just to breathe. If only Ciara Fay, the protagonist, could escape so easily from the manipulation and gaslighting of her husband, Ryan.

The axis of their marriage is subtly hinted in the book’s second sentence: “After some manoeuvring, ignoring tuts from the passenger seat, she’s managed to squeeze her old silver Micra into a tight parking spot.” When someone “tuts,” that is not a sign of respect for another person’s success at a tricky parking job.

Within a few more pages, Ryan is dictating to, criticizing, and ignoring Ciara, while she repeatedly apologizes. Then he stalks out, slamming the door “with such force that the side lamp topples off the table and onto the tiles.” Unfortunately, as Ciara knows, he’ll return.

The pair are married six years earlier after a whirlwind courtship, and Ciara gave up a job she loved, traveling around the world teaching English, to settle with Ryan in Dublin. It doesn’t take long for his charm to turn to belittling and anger. Ciara tries to leave him two years before the book opens, getting as far as her mother’s home near Manchester, England. But she is unsure and scared, with a newborn and a toddler. Ryan lures her back.

Now, pregnant again, Ciara abruptly realizes that she can’t stay in the marriage any longer. While Ryan is taking a shower, she gathers damp clothing from the clothesline, her small hoard of cash, her daughters’ passports and favorite toys, and not much else. She and the girls are gone before Ryan has toweled dry.

Over the next few months, Ryan varies from sweet-talking (“I’ve loved you since the moment I first saw you”) to mockery to insults to threats of a custody battle. Meanwhile, Ciara and her daughters Sophie and Ella crowd into a welfare hotel room that reeks of “stuffy ironed polyester” as she tries to juggle a part-time job, morning sickness, the girls’ childcare, her looming custody hearing, the hotel’s rigid rules, her shrinking bank account, and the hopeless quest for an affordable apartment that will take government housing vouchers.

What’s especially important is that this is not a story about physical abuse, which might leave injuries that are easily visible. It’s about psychological abuse and marital rape, which are much more difficult to explain to outsiders.

Here’s an example of how Ryan operates, as he pressures Ciara to let him visit the girls:

“‘So you’ll bring them over and leave them with me?’

               ‘Yes.’

                ‘A few times a week?’

                ‘Sure.’ How many days is ‘a few’? She’s annoyed with herself for being vague, placating as always.

                Ryan shakes his head. ‘What’s the plan here? Do you even know what you’re doing? I’m worried about you, honestly.’”

The book isn’t always on the edge of panic. Interspersed throughout Ciara’s desperation are scenes of the camaraderie among the hotel’s residents and the joys of motherhood. At one point, when the girls are finishing their bath, “freshly pink out of the gurgling tub,” Ciara jokes by placing the baby’s diaper on different ridiculous spots on their and her bodies. “Ella and Sophie are squealing. ‘Do it again, do it to me, Mammy!’”

Author Roisin O’Donnell’s writing can be piercing in both its description and its insight. The night “is streaked with soft white clouds, as if a child has smudged a chalky handprint across the sky.” As Ryan continues to cajole her and the children, Ciara thinks, “It’s like she’s fighting against gravity. Trying to stop herself from falling off a cliff, when she’s already jumped.”

The only serious problem interfering with this debut is the portrayal of Ryan. He and his parents are two-dimensional villains. (His charm is simply one of his tools, so it doesn’t count as a likable trait.) The story would be even more powerful if readers could see qualities that still tempt and confuse Ciara.

But overall, the book succeeds brilliantly at showing the manipulation, terror, confusion, and self-doubt of this sort of abuse—long before Ciara understands all of this herself.