Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent

Gallery/Scout Press, 352 pages, $28 (c2020)

Maybe the moral of this story is: Choose your siblings well. (Haha.) Liz Nugent has written an entertaining book in which the plot twists gently at first, then more, and more. At the end, with all that twisting, the reader should be pretty well wrung out.

William, Brian, and Luke are three brothers not very far apart in age. They grew up in Ireland in a household with a mom and dad. But that’s where the resemblance to “Leave It to Beaver” ends. There are four segments of the book, with each brother having one of the first three.

The book begins with the information that one of the brothers has died but, aha!, we don’t know which one. Has he been murdered? Did one of the other brothers have something to do with his death? 

William, the oldest, begins the book. The chapters flow back and forth in time, but I have to say that where I am usually annoyed by this sort of gimmick, I thought Nugent presented her time switching very smoothly. The relevance of each time period referenced chapters in the other brothers’ stories. I think I will have to spill some of the beans in order to tell you what impressed me about how Nugent handled the brothers’ stories. So,

SPOILER ALERT …….

This isn’t much of a bean-spiller, but still, it reveals some of how Nugent intends to work her book. William’s story begins in a fairly traditional fashion. He begins as the hero of his story. He is the good husband and the good father. As his story goes along, the good husband sort of loses a few Brownie points. Then he dumps a pile of points. He is not the good boy his mother — another significant character in the book, but she doesn’t get a chapter — believes he is. Also, the brothers have definite problems getting along with each other; this one with that one, then the other one with one of them. They drift apart, reconfigure, and break apart again. There are tiny mysteries which are explained in another brother’s story. There are characters who appear in other time frames.

I was mesmerized by Nugent’s gymnastics. She must have had lots of Post-It notes so she could keep track of the storylines to which she wanted to return. As I said, the timeline jumps around and while it is the reader’s responsibility to remember what happened, it’s not painful to figure out when a plot point bears fruit.

There is mental illness in the family, beginning with the boys’ mother. She has her own tragic times and she covers the parts of her life she doesn’t want to think about by being dramatic, selfish, and the center of her own universe. Certainly one of the boys has his own break with reality. The other two have their undisciplined moments and center-of-the-universe arrogance. 

It is not until a few pages from the end Nugent finally reveals which brother died and why. It is chilling and appropriate. 

Nugent is an excellent plotter. Her story is not so much a dwelling on the psychology or psychosis of her characters as it is a horror story.