Our Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent
From the author 'Unravelling Oliver' comes this tale of a deeply darkly dysfunctional family. An abusive narcisstic mother favours her eldest son who is a vile sexist named Will. She does not engage with her neglected mentally ill youngest son named Luke, in fact she actively harms him. The middle son Brian is a selfish, mean, resentful jerk. Years pass, Luke is ever more abused in ever more heartless ways by his family and others who make assumptions about his personality. Will is proud and resolute in his crapulence. Brian is useless and things come to a dark, sad end. This was good but causes ongoing frustrations.
Best Lines:
“I don't know why or who made up the name. The others thought it made us dound edgy and dangerous. I thought it made us sound illiterate.”
“Fan mail from little girls who hadn't learned how to do joined-up writing yet.”
“Hillbilly is not the look that Sony wants for you.”
“Drab and forlorn characters with their cockney vowels and garish lipstick. Inevitably, a fight broke out.”
“You're doing nothing day in, day out.”
“She didn't appear to have a career.”
“Couldn't find my car, presumed it was stolen again.”
“Swiped bread out of the hands of children who were feeding ducks.”
“Why do you may everything so much worse?”
“Hung out with 'friends' until they told me to leave, or wash, or to contrbute towards their bills,”
“Mum wouldn't let me into her house since the time I'd set fire to her dressing room.”
“My family were all talking to me, which was a good sign.”
“Fitted perfectly into her role for me as a failure.”
“Gave away fourteen bottles of wine to some homeless guys who used to hang out in the lake behind my house.”
“Felt good and virtuous.”
“Street-pissers.”
“Enjoyed being the one who hadn't disgraced himself.”
“Encounters with the guards and psychiatric institutions were well documented.”