“Nesting,” Roisín O’Donnell’s gripping debut novel, contains all the twists and turns of a classic thriller; but its heroine, Ciara, isn’t trying to solve a mystery or a murder — she’s a housewife struggling to cut ties with her abusive husband. Ryan is “the type of man who other women sneak glances at,” when he’s acting the part of the loyal, hard-working father on the beach or at the playground. In the privacy of their home, he terrorizes Ciara, and she knows she has to leave.
But where can she go? Ciara lives in Dublin amid a housing crisis in 2018. She has no friends, because Ryan cut her off from them; and she can’t flee to her mother and sister in England, because Ryan will not grant her permission to take their daughters, aged 4 and 2, out of the country.
And with what money? Ciara has none and no way to earn any. When they married, Ryan insisted Ciara quit her job as a teacher, claiming she couldn’t work in Ireland because she didn’t speak Irish, which Ciara later learns was a lie.
Where will Ciara and the children sleep, if not in Ryan’s home? How will they buy groceries, if not with the money that Ryan doles out to her? Ciara isn’t sure she’s even capable of thinking for herself anymore. “For years, she has been cut off from the world,” she realizes. “Her head floods with that uneasy feeling of having lost track of her own mind.”
That Ciara’s struggles are endured by so many victims of domestic violence makes them no less suspenseful than the travails of a detective or assassin or spy. “Nesting” is tense and propulsive from the very beginning, when Ciara learns she is pregnant. She has tried to leave Ryan before, when her younger daughter was just a few weeks old, but didn’t manage to stay away for long. This time, Ciara bolts on instinct, grabbing laundry off the line and buckling her children into her car without much of a plan.
While she waits for subsidized housing, Ciara secures temporary emergency lodging through city services in a rundown hotel: one room for their soon-to-be family of four with no hot plate to cook on and no fridge for their groceries. The front desk warns her that she’ll be kicked out if she fails to check in before 8 every night, or if the hotel reaches full capacity. Ciara also manages to find a teaching job, but it’s on a probationary basis, and she’s not always able to prepare for class because of sick children and pregnancy complications.
“Leaving is one thing, but staying away is another,” a victim of domestic violence tells Ciara. She knows it would in many ways be easier to give up and return home. After all, Ciara reminds herself, Ryan has never actually hit her. His abuse comes in nearly every other form — emotional, financial, sexual — but home also means pasta bakes, bath toys, warm laundry, even happy memories with Ryan that Ciara is unable to shake. She isn’t sure what is worse for her daughters in the long term: living in a cramped hotel room, or growing up believing that the way their father treats their mother is normal, and OK.
Aside from a heavy-handed side plot about vulnerable hatchlings that I found distracting and contrived, “Nesting” is immersive and emotional. I rooted for Ciara as she scrambled to find stable housing, keep her job and make new friends. I agonized as she tried to potty-train, breastfeed and celebrate Christmas all in one drab and tiny hotel room.
And I raged at Ryan’s endless mind games and predations, especially when he and Ciara face off against each other in court. Ciara is desperate for full custody, but unable to articulate the extent of Ryan’s abuse to a judge because she is still processing it herself, which gives Ryan an opening to exploit Ciara’s trauma and financial precarity. He argues that she is unhinged and irrational for raising their children in an unsafe situation and demands his parental rights as a father. But he shirked his parental duties when Ciara still lived at home, and she finds it impossible to imagine that he will be capable of caring for their children during the overnight visits he is fighting for. Will he unintentionally harm them? Or will he intentionally harm them to get his revenge if Ciara won’t agree to get back together? Is it safer for them to reunite?
Like every worthy thriller, “Nesting” keeps the reader guessing until the end. It is rare and refreshing to read a satisfyingly suspenseful novel that exists in such a domestic sphere: a quiet world of Duplos and nursing bras, day cares and playrooms, instead of dark alleys and underworlds.
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