Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell review – a tense portrait of coercive control
About a quarter of the way through Roisín O’Donnell’s unbearably tense debut novel, the protagonist finds herself in the foyer of a Dublin hotel. She picks up a brochure, which advises her to “escape the pressures of everyday life at the Hotel Eden”; the problem is that Ciara and her two young daughters are not trying to escape everyday stresses, but Ciara’s coercive and domineering husband – and crucially, this time they are trying to stay away for good.
Ireland’s housing crisis means there is nowhere, physically, for them to go. Ciara’s family are based in the UK and Ryan has put a block on the girls’ passports, while his controlling ways have cut Ciara off from all her friends. She is also completely financially dependent on him. What follows, then, is a nightmarish attempt to navigate the housing system – a series of cramped waiting rooms and complex forms and unanswered phone calls, which could be described as Kafkaesque, except Josef K didn’t also have to keep a two- and a four-year-old fed, washed and entertained while schlepping between dead-end court hearings.
Alongside the soul-destroying bureaucracy (and constant Frozen videos), we are offered flashbacks from Ciara and Ryan’s relationship, revealing just what it is she is trying to flee. O’Donnell does an excellent job of tracking Ryan’s transition from whirlwind romancer to something more menacing. She also shows how the lack of physical violence actually makes it harder for Ciara to convey the urgency of her situation to the authorities – and easier for her to gaslight herself into thinking she is being overdramatic.
What's striking is the novel’s dizzying speed – reading it is more akin to devouring a thriller than a work of domestic realism
Before Nesting, O’Donnell was best known as a writer of short fiction. Her debut collection The Wild Quiet offered portraits of a diverse and changing Ireland, with many stories focused on immigrant families trying to make a home. In Nesting we get glimpses of similar lives via the staff at Hotel Eden, where Ciara eventually secures a room. She also starts working part-time at an English language school, where students from all over the world buzz with excitement at having fled home – a mood that stands in cruel contrast to Ciara’s own precarious situation. We learn how, before Ryan, Ciara used to travel the globe teaching English; now her world has been reduced to a single hotel bedroom where she and the girls wash their clothes in the sink and try to eke out small joys with the other women and children living along the corridor.
Ciara calls on her favourite authors to bring her strength – Toni Morrison, Lucia Berlin, Maya Angelou. The caged bird trope is taken even further when Ryan, in an attempt to lure Ciara and the girls back, rescues a trio of nestlings from the garden and sets about nursing them to health. Only one survives, a mottled crow he keeps on a leash – a strange and striking image, full of metaphorical resonance.
What is also striking is the novel’s dizzying speed, a reading experience more akin to devouring a thriller than a work of domestic realism. This is a credit to O’Donnell’s writing, and shows just how far we are invested in Ciara and her daughters’ fate. That said, occasionally the pace is so swift it risks undermining the sense of peril. Halfway through, for example, one of the girls falls ill and has to be hospitalised. We worry for her health – for what their absence from the hotel will mean for their housing application status – but within two pages the ordeal is over and everything returns to how it was, danger averted.
Perhaps, though, such momentum is simply a testament to Ciara’s unfailing resilience – and to the resilience of the 4,000 Irish children who, as the endnote informs us, sleep in emergency accommodation every night. Nesting offers a moving portrait of life inside the housing system and the courage it takes to try to build a home in society’s cracks.
• Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell is published by Scribner (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
