Book Review: Little Cruelties

Synopsis:

All three of the Drumm brothers were at the funeral.

One of them was in the coffin.

William, Brian, and Luke: three boys, born a year apart, trained from birth by their wily mother to compete for her attention. They play games, as brothers do . . .

Yet even after the Drumms grow up and escape into the world beyond their windows, those games — those little cruelties — grow more sinister, more merciless, and more dangerous.

With their lives entwined like the strands of a noose, only two of the brothers will survive.

You hurt the ones you love the most.

Review:

Author Liz Nugent/em> was a stage manager in Ireland theaters and on international tours before turning to writing for radio and television dramas. She says that she developed a love of reading early in life. “I associated books with love.” After her parents separated when she was seven years old, time spent with her father meant trips to the library. “We would both withdraw two books each,” she recalls. “We would then return to his house and eat sweets and read for an hour, before discussing our books with each other. It made me feel very grown up and that my opinions mattered. If I have a gift at all, it came from him.” Nugent’s her first novel, Unraveling Oliver, won the Irish Book Award for Crime Novel of the Year. She came to the attention of many American readers with Lying in Wait in 2018, a nightmare inducing story in which she took sociopathy to unprecedented levels.

Little Cruelties opens at the funeral for one of the three Drumm brothers, but Nugent cleverly withholds critical information, immediately pulling readers into the suspense and dysfunctional family drama. Which brother is deceased? And how did he die?

Nugent employs three first-person narratives to relate the story from the perspectives of William, a film producer; Luke, a successful singer; and Brian, initially a teacher, who becomes Luke’s manager. Melissa, their mother, was a showband singer and actress who was away performing most evenings, so their quiet, unassuming, much-older father cared for them. He referred to Melissa as his “orphan girl” and likely knew she cheated on him. He died of prostate cancer when William was seventeen years old. Their mother died in 2014.

There are lots of dirty little secrets in this family, aren’t there?

The brothers relate events and details about their relationships with each other from various time periods in their life, beginning when they were children in the 1970’s. It’s a storytelling technique that requires great skill and Nugent is up to the task. Despite the nonlinear manner in which she crafts the tale, it is a cohesive and compelling account that shows, over time, how the brothers compete with and resent each other, frequently for good reason. They pursue their career goals, often with the support, encouragement, assistance, and interference of each other, as well as their mother. They come to each other’s rescue, often begrudgingly, and betray each other in spectacular fashion. At one point, two of them question the third brother’s sexuality, not to mention the lengths to which he will go to earn money after being driven from his career. Their relationships with women are as messy as their interactions with each other, and complicated by their siblings’ role in them.

Each brother is fully formed and intricately crafted — simultaneously sympathetic and despicable in his own way. William finds success, marriage, and fatherhood. The closest to their mother, he is duplicitous, calculating, and treats women abominably. Will sees himself as his brother’s long-suffering caretaker . . . for how long and at what price? Luke struggles with excesses — religion, followed by fame, money, women, drugs. He is talented, charming, and lovable, but irresponsible, unpredictable, and exasperating as a result of mental illness. Is he capable of getting himself sorted out and creating a meaningful life for himself? Luke is the son with whom Melissa shared a terrible secret when he was just thirteen years old. Brian is a quintessential middle child who expresses the ways in which he was treated unfairly by his parents. Their mother favored Will, and Luke and their father were close. Brian felt left out, and grew increasingly resentful, although he attempts to outwardly take on the role of peacemaker in the family. Frugal to the point of obsession, but extremely selfish, his actions are always designed to get what he thinks he deserves, but his brothers do not. He harbors feelings for Will’s wife, Susan.

Nugent illustrates the role that the boys’ upbringing and, more specifically, Melissa’s narcissism and emotional abuse of her children plays in forming their personalities and establishing their worldviews. Instead of drawing together as a result of their shared childhood experiences, the brothers strike out against and visit myriad little cruelties upon each other. Their relationships and interactions are toxic, invoking strong emotional reactions.

The story is riveting, particularly for fans of tales focused on sibling relationships, and the underlying mystery propels it forward at a steady pace as curiosity about how the life of one of the brothers ends mounts. It is an unflinchingly dark story but unceasingly entertaining story, punctuated by surprising plot twists and an ending that is breathtakingly horrifying . . . in more than one respect.

Little Cruelties is masterfully crafted and engrossing.