3* The Benefactors - Wendy Erskine.

The Benefactors has an intriguing plot. Misty has been the subject of a sexual encounter that went beyond her consent at an Air BnB with a group of boys who she has previously spent time with. Misty is the step-daughter of a taxi driver who does his best for the two daughters who were abandoned with him by their errant mother. When Misty reports the incident, the boys mothers, each of who exert a middle-class power band together. Thereafter are layers of parenting, family ties and class.

This book has stunning reviews and I read it quickly. However, I wanted to like it more than I did. The writing was discombobulating and there are a lot of characters, most with a lengthy backstory. The plot is mired in a lot of extraneous detail which jars with the progress of the book. It clearly had a fan base but it wasn’t one for me.

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC.

If Wendy Erksine writes it, I’m pretty certain I’m gonna love it and this was certainly no exception.

As a huge fan of Dance Move and Sweet Home, I was so excited to see The Benefactors appear on Netgalley and even more ecstatic that Hodder & Stoughton let me have early access because waiting until June would have been a killer!

Once you get past the frequent flipping between characters, it’s impossible not to become immersed in the story and Erskine does an incredible job of describing the incident through so many unique perspectives!

I’ll definitely be purchasing a physical copy once it releases and making everyone read it!

Do-Gooders

This is Wendy Erskine’s first novel, following two volumes of short stories, and it’s a cracker!

Three powerful mothers defend their three sons, accused of assaulting a girl, the step-daughter of a working class taxi driver. They have wealth, intelligence and influence on their side. The girl has been raised in the house of man who is not her father, abandoned by her own feckless mother, and she earns a little money meeting older men on the internet through a platform called Benefactors. So far, so simple.

Where this novel is especially successful is in the delineation of character, motivation, and personality. Every character in the novel is a deeply and convincingly constructed individual. In tune with her role as a short story writer, Erskine has continuous sections which focus on individuals who are at best tangential to the plot, often at two or three removes. These episodes provide an eccentric Greek chorus to the central story, and can be curiously both insightful and irritating. For gritty social realism the story hits the target every time.

The mothers, the sons, the girl, her stepfather, his grandmother and the others in their respective family circles, all emerge as personalities about whom we want to learn more. We may hate some of them, be shocked by others, but this is the sort of book where the reader feels a sense of loss when the final sentence is read.

The story has some wonderful comic episodes and is inventive and original throughout. There is much trauma, but there is also a quiet sense of possibility at the end.

This is an amazing novel. You will never have read anything quite like it. I recommend it absolutely.

I’ve been a devoted fan of Wendy's work ever since I first discovered her short story collections, and I can confidently say that her debut novel did not disappoint in the slightest. From start to finish, it captivated me. The absence of traditional chapters was also a brilliant choice, making the narrative flow more seamlessly and giving the book a unique, almost experimental feel. It kept me completely engaged and made the entire experience feel fresh and original.

While I didn’t necessarily connect with many of the characters on a personal level, I found them incredibly compelling and complex. Their flaws and contradictions were so vividly rendered that even when I didn’t like them, I couldn’t look away. Wendy's portrayal of the different social classes in Northern Ireland was also particularly striking. She captured the tensions, struggles, and dynamics with such precision, offering a rich and authentic perspective that’s not often seen in literature.

One character that really stood out to me was Boogie. He’s the kind of character who is rarely given the spotlight in fiction, and Wendy’s treatment of him felt incredibly refreshing. Boogie brought a rawness to the story that I think will resonate with many readers.

This is one of those books that will stick with me for a long time, and I’m already looking forward to recommending it to customers when it’s released in June. Wendy has once again proven herself to be an exceptional writer, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

The premise of this book enthralled me as it was reminiscent of the Belfast rape case. However, I could not get behind the writing and once I got the huge amount of characters sorted in my head, it felt like I was reading pages and pages of minutia before getting to the heart of the matter.

Rape from the point of view of the mothers of the perpetrators is such an interesting concept but I didn't fine the way this was executed interesting at all.

Way too much back story.

In my review of Wendy Erskine’s debut short-story collection “Sweet Home” (2018), I tried to describe what I saw as her signature technique as “what is unspoken or at best gradually acknowledged, to create in the reader an empathetic reaction to the character’s behavior when viewed in the context of their past (a past, often hinging in a single event, which leads to a feeling of exclusion or loss)” and further went on to say that one of the characters (when discussing a fictionally famously obscure pop star’s – Gil Courtney’s - music) inadvertently gave a perfect review of what the author herself achieves: “It just, what it does is, it just – penetrates to the heart of what it means to be lonely, or in love or to feel a failure … a total affirmation of what it is to be alive …. There’s warmth there and there’s strangeness there”

And I felt both conclusions were as true of her second collection “Dance Moves” (2022) and In an interview post that collection novel when asked to describe her own style, the author rather brilliantly said “I remain, stylistically, a stick of seaside rock with HUMANE and SLEAZY running through it, top to bottom.”

This is her debut novel – to be published later in 2025 – and I am delighted to say that it has everything that make her short story collections so strong and which I think is captured in the comments (be me, by her character and by the author) above, while also being a really impressive, expansive and engrossing novel in its own right (this is very much not a drawn out short story).

The set up of the novel is simply explained. Set like most of her writing predominantly in Belfast (and also in this case in an, I think fictional, rich enclave on its outskirts) we meet in turn three relatively privileged mothers of 18 year old boys, friends on the verge of starting university.

Frankie – from a children’s home background, but who uses her carefully cultivated glamour to marry an older man who made his fortune in compression software (and who she first dated when she worked on a private airline and his wife was dying) and her stepson Chris.

Bronagh – the daughter of two GPs and now hands-on CEO and fundraiser for an increasingly well known children’s charity and her son Lyness (Line Up).

Miriam – in mourning for her husband (a Coptic Egyptian) who recently died in a car crash (with an unexplained young female passenger) and her son Rami.

The three boys at a party in an Airbnb have a sexual encounter with a girl Misty (who sometimes supplies drugs to them and their friends) – an encounter which goes from consensual to non-consensual and which afterwards she decides to report to the police (partly due to the arrogant assumption of the boys that she won’t).

Misty herself works in a hotel but also in her bedroom on the titular Benefactors (Bennyz) where subscribers can talk to her (and more). Her father (her mother having dumped her and her younger sister with him many years after they broke up) Boogie is a taxi driver.

The story flows as a third-party point of view between the different characters – mainly Misty, Boogie and the three mothers, both leading up to the night and then after as its repercussions play out.

The two key themes of the novel for me (both portrayed in a natural rather than heavy handed way) are: parenting – what responsibilities do you have to your own child, but also what do you have to other people and their children; and class/privilege – social and economic.

There are so many really well-done scenes – ones where I think the author’s short story skills come to the fore in the ability to use an interaction to sketch so much of a character’s life and personality.

Just a few that come to mind as I wrote this review:

Frankie’s interactions in a children’s home with another girl and soon friend Michelle (and as an aside how pleased are we that unlike Michelle Wendy Erskine is very “interested in back story sobstory gobstory”); Rami’s desperately ashamed and embarrassed confession to his Mum Miriam of his role in the assault; Bronagh’s first meetings with Frankie and then with Frankie and Miriam, with her perhaps nervous garrulousness unmatched and effectively rebuffed by the others; a poignant encounter between Bronagh and man on an airplane (poignant as much for how a largely one way conversation stays with her later); Misty’s Bennyx chats with an American customer Mike; Misty’s interview at a funeral parlour; Miriam’s trips to a sports shop to look at the mannequins – and the desperately sad reason why she does it, and later her meeting with the girl who was in the car crash; Bronagh’s reckoning with Lyness..

And another really distinguishing feature – one which makes me think the author could if she wished very easily excel in flash fiction as well as short stories and novels – is the polyphonic addition to the text of some 50 (I think – I may have miscounted) half to three page first party vignettes from a variety of different, unnamed, characters directly, indirectly or tangentially linked to the main characters and the incidents of the novel (just one example – the unofficial property manager for the Airbnb) – which together really give the novel pacing and a sense of collective community.

There is also some really nice humour to the novel – Boogie’s paternal grandmother Nan D is a scene stealer, particularly in her comments on and later interactions with Leigh (Misty’s largely absent mother).

And as a writer who is so skilled at creating characters that draw in a reader; it’s also simply a real pleasure to be able to stay with those characters for more pages in this longer form.

At one point Boogie says of passengers in his cab

Sometimes though nothing's said at all and there's a sadness, nothing made explicit but it's there, a crazy melancholy that stays when they get out which means that sometimes, even in the rain, he needs to open a window to let it disappear

And this same melancholy infuses the novel I think alongside the humour – but unlike Boogie I did not want to open the window and let it disappear but felt somewhat bereft when the novel ended.

Highly recommended.

FROM THE COVER📖

In The Benefactors we meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh - very different women but all mothers to 18-year-old boys. Glamorous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children's services charity, loves the celebrity and prestige this brings her. They do not know each other yet, but when their sons are accused of sexually assaulting Misty Johnston, whose family lacks the wealth and social-standing of their own, they'll leverage all the power of their position to protect their children.


From the prize-winning author of Dance Move and Sweet Home, this is an astounding novel about intimate histories, class and money - and what being a parent means. Brutal, tender and rigorously intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, polyphonic presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland. It is also very funny.

REVIEW ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Having read a lot works from Irish writers this year I can honestly say that this is among the best I've read it's right up there with the most established of Irish works.
I adored Erskine's short works Dance Move so was really excited to see what she could do with a novel as is with her short stories she captures modern day Belfast perfectly.

In the simplest of terms the plot is the fall out of a young girl who is assaulted by a group of boys she thought were her friends, the girl being Misty comes from a normal working class family and the boys coming from over privileged indulgent backgrounds.

Taking the view and narrative from the victim and her family, the perpetrators and their families, employers, acquaintances, colleagues some from bit players in Misty’s story, others apparently random often slotting into the story later we follow the fall out and impact the attack has on the wider community. Hearing peoples own stories that leads to their take on Misty's story. Told in short paragraphs of observations from each person sometimes only once and multiply times for others the narrative expertly uses dark humour to explore class, privilege and consent within a non traditional layout/structure . The voices are disembodied / unattributed and together they create a brilliant portrait of wider society through deeply layered characters. I found Frankie was the characters I liked to hear most from, I found the similarities between her Misty were subtly drawn on and the little nuances that made them vastly different at the same time worked really well, it made for complex thought provoking reading.

The narrative slips from character to character, layering back stories which bring each of them vividly to life in all their complexity. Erskine's writing style can feel at first a little disjointed and all over the place but as the novel progress this style works masterfully to create a deeply rich novel full of depth and shows writing of a different class. The chatty tone and dark humour though out add a sense of realism in this highly recommend elegantly constructed, thoughtful and absorbing novel which ends on a note of hope with a kind of justice having been done.

Class act from start to finish I couldn't put it done. The seemly simple of the surface but deeply enriched and complex below. Five stars all the way.

I really liekd this. The story was so beaitifully told, and I felt a real kinship to the characters. It was quite emotional in places.

Boogie had been only eighteen when their rackety mother left her two daughters with him but proved himself up to the task of raising them both, never distinguishing between Misty and his biological child. Misty works in a classy hotel, harbouring a fancy for Chris the son of one of the city’s richest men When he invites her to a party in an abandoned house with Lyness and Rami, she’s happy to have been picked out. The evening ends badly for Misty. When she reports the rape to the police, the machinery of privilege and influence swings into action.
Wendy Erskine threads short paragraphs of observations through her narrative, some from bit players in Misty’s story, others apparently random often slotting into the story later. It’s a style that feels a little disjointed at first, but it adds depth to this richly textured novel which explores class, privilege and consent through Misty, her family and the families of the three young men who rape her. The narrative slips from character to character, layering back stories which bring each of them vividly to life in all their complexity. Expectations raised high by Erskine’s short stories were surpassed by this elegantly constructed, thoughtful and absorbing novel which ends on a note of hope with a kind of justice having been done.

There's a simple plot at the heart of this book. A young woman from an imperfect background is assaulted by three young men from relative degrees of privilege. It's approached from almost every possible angle - the victim and her family, the perpetrators and their families, employers, acquaintances, colleagues and a lonely American man on the internet. These layers create unexpected pockets of empathy in places and in others the characters hoist themselves by their own petards - Bronagh is a masterful creation of hypocrisy. Lots of the voices are disembodied / unattributed and together they create a brilliant portrait of contemporary Belfast. I don't know if it was a formatting issue or a stylistic device that meant that different narrative viewpoints often continued within the same paragraph. I love polyphonic novels like this and it's SO well done but the run-on text occasionally pulled me out of the immersive reading experience which was a shame.