I’m back again this week with another ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Friday! 2025 has brought me so many amazing books, so far.
Title: Nesting
Author: Roisin O’Donnell
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Genre: Irish Literary Fiction
2025 Longlisted for Women’s Prize
I actually read this one a few weeks ago, but it’s one those books I simultaniously can’t stop thinking about and yet feel worthless to articulate the brilliance of it.
{Thank you @librofm for ALC narrated by Louisa Harland. #gifted I though the audiobook was brilliant because it gives you a narrator with an Irish accent for a Dublin setting and the way this story in told in a rambling inner monologue works so well in audio format. This book is absolutely brilliant, but I think the audio experience elevates it even further!}
Love, hope, and resilience. Tense, haunting and beautiful. These are just a few adjectives what spring to mind to describe Nesting.
Make no mistake, this is not an easy read. Verbal abuse, narcissism, and gaslighting never are.
We meet the main character, Ciara, questioning how her life went off the rails. She met an amazing man, started a family—he provides a good life. She’s not the victim of physical abuse, so it must all be in her head the verbal lashings she takes.
No, it’s not abuse. Is it? Is this love? Something is not right? No, no, it’s all in my head . . .
Ciara continuously questions things until one day she snaps while playing with her children in the garden. While her husband is in the shower, she grabs the clothes off the line and a few meager possessions and FLEES.
Her escape is met with meager savings, no job, her family far away and a housing crisis in Dublin. She finally finds an assistance program and begins living in a hotel with her children.
Her husband is relentless and controlling in his attempts to get her to return home.
This journey is worth the read as you see a woman grow stronger everyday. The sadness is met with a satisfying ending. It’s eye opening.
I can’t recommend this one enough for fans of Irish fiction, literary fiction, mothers, women, and for a fictional voice that teaches empathy.
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