
This blistering debut novel from the acclaimed short-story writer Wendy Erskine circles around a case of sexual assault, expanding into a polyphonic story that is at once an evocative fictional oral history of contemporary Belfast, a powerful depiction of trauma and a provocative exploration of social power dynamics.
Erskine teases out narrative strands through a handful of characters’ viewpoints and intersperses these with vignettes written in a first-person verbatim style from a wider cast. She has carefully selected her main parts. Alongside Misty, the assaulted teenager, the focus is on the three women whose 18-year-old sons were the perpetrators. There is Frankie, who has left a childhood in care, thanks to the appeal of her laboriously maintained appearance to her tech-millionaire husband; Miriam, who suffers a complicated grief that involves stroking mannequins; and Bronagh, who relishes the glamour of her role as CEO of a children’s charity, while spoiling her only child.
Misty’s own mother is largely absent. Raised with her half-sister by her cab-driver stepfather, Misty hopes for a career in stage and special effects make-up, but is topping up her wages from a hotel restaurant with an account on Benefactors (also known as Bennyz), an OnlyFans-style website where people pay her for content. Erskine dexterously explores her characters’ flaws and conflicts, while creating comedy through dialogue, as in this typical takedown of Bronagh as she describes Misty’s Bennyz profile:
‘It’s quite ridiculous, but she calls herself Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Obviously trying to make herself sound like some Knightsbridge-dwelling It Girl.’
‘She was a 19th-century poet,’ Miriam says. ‘Married to Robert Browning.’
‘Oh. Well, you learn something new every day.’
When Erskine first introduces us to the Benefactors website, it’s via Misty, emphasising the painful clash of childhood with this adult world. For near-naked poses, ‘she made sure that she moved her old cuddly toy off the bed, the one with the zip where she can put her pyjamas. Because, sad to say, that would attract the wrong crowd.’ Misty goes on Bennyz after the sexual assault, where one of her regulars, Mike from Wyoming, says she should tell her mother, or the police. ‘She’d never heard again from Mike, after that night. She thought he might have hung around to see how it had gone with the police. But he didn’t.’
Erskine shows that even the least demanding clients can scarcely be considered ‘benefactors’ in the literal sense of ‘doing good’. The website is a metonym for Erskine’s exploration of societal inequality, as she considers how much goodness is attached to giving money; who benefits from supposed acts of beneficence; and, crucially, whether it’s possible for Misty to tilt the balance of power in her favour, against the three rich boys who assaulted her.
The Benefactors is vital reading, both for its lively energy and its political weight.
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