The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine review – a polyphonic portrait of class and trauma in Belfast

The acclaimed short-story writer brings her characters vividly to life in this debut novel about a teenage girl’s assault and its aftermathThat we tend to regard the shift from the short story to the novel as a natural authorial progression perhaps speaks to a failure to recognise the shorter form as its own distinct discipline. Short stories are not novels in miniature, or parts of novels pruned to stand on their own. Without the luxury of space and looser pacing, they demand of the writer a linguistic precision and compression that, at its most radical, borders on the poetic, and which across the breadth of a novel would feel wearying. Novels need room to breathe. The writer expanding their scope therefore faces a difficult adjustment: guarding against density while ensuring they don’t get lost in the space.For Wendy Erskine, the move to a larger canvas feels entirely unforced. Her highly praised stories, collected in 2018’s Sweet Home and 2022’s Dance Move, often display a certain capaciousness, a willingness to wander beyond the single epiphanic moment that is the traditional preserve of the short story. Now, in her first novel, she revels in the possibilities of an expanded cast, yet controls the pace and framing with all the precision of a miniaturist. The result is a novel that feels like a balancing act: at once sprawling and meticulous, polyphonic and tonally coherent.Misty could end up with one of those lawyers like off the films, a young underdog, nice long hair like your woman, can’t remember her name. She’s been in loads of things. From the wrong side of the tracks, underdog, but sees something in Misty that reminds her of herself, you know what I mean? And works night and day. In libraries at midnight and grafting grafting grafting. And she turns a whole jury around, our girl. And those guys are going down and their lives are just grubbed up for all time. Continue reading...

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