Dark and despairing

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Unravelling Oliver: A Novel by Liz Nugent. 


                            

Oliver Ryan, known as Vincent Dax, successful Children's writer, all but abondoned child, grows up in a boarding school with no love and no friends, until he meets Michael Condell and his sister Laura.
Who Oliver really is is unveiled chapter by chapter until we come to know him--and thoroughly dislike him.
His egocentric outlook, his destructiveness born of his abandonment and his desire for a father's love and acknowledgement, are the ingredients that meld together forming him. The stewpot of his angst.
I think Barney is my hero and it's sad that Alice never will know him.
Unravelling Oliver almost unravelled me. Brilliantly written, each chapter presents the various characters and their viewpoint on Oliver's Life. Surprise begets more surprise.
A gritty, emotionally charged, psychological novel that provides little pleasure but lots of fascination. I was compelled to finish it even as I was repelled by Oliver. And that compulsion is what had me giving this 5 stars rather than 3.

A NetGalley ARC

*****

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