Truth is in the title of Liz Nugent’s latest book – and truth, or the lack of it, is at the heart of this story too. Ruby Cooper and her elder sister Erin live a sheltered and comfortable life in Boston, the cosseted daughters of Douglas, an investment broker who is also pastor and founder of a Christian church with traditional values, and Maureen, a stay-at-home mother who is originally from Ireland.
It’s a privileged and generally happy existence for the girls until, one day, something happens to Ruby that will spectacularly split the Coopers apart. After ‘the incident’ as the family call it, someone ends up in prison, Ruby and Maureen move to Ireland, and Erin and her father stay in Boston. So much for the family that prays together, stays together.
What follows is a deep dive into dysfunctional family life, spanning decades. It’s a subject that Nugent loves to explore in her books, and from angles that no one else has likely ever thought of. The result is both dark and disturbing. But if you come to The Truth About Ruby Cooper expecting another Strange Sally Diamond, Nugent’s award-winning novel of 2023, might be sorely disappointed. Sally had an endearing quirkiness about her; Ruby is another kettle of fish entirely and you’d be hard-pressed to find a single redeeming quality in this one. Nugent displays a dogged determination to create someone completely unlikeable here – and she succeeds.
As the Coopers fall apart in dramatic fashion, what we are witnessing is likely to make you step back and think. What if something similar happened to me? How would I react? Could I cope? It’s to Nugent’s credit that we can still find the capacity to find a kind of kinship and grudging respect for the players in this sorry state of affairs.
The narrative is split between Ruby and Erin, with each taking pains to promote their own agenda. This batting to and fro can feel almost metronomic until, about two-thirds of the way through, other voices are heard. The resulting arrhythmia sends everything off-balance. I found myself stopping and starting with this read, never fully engaging with the characters and, as a result, feeling happy to set the book aside and get on with something else.
The dual settings are skewing too. This is a book where you’ll never feel absolutely in control. Ireland doesn’t come across as very Irish and tends to meld in with Boston and beyond. Granted, we’re talking Dublin, a place with a cosmopolitan feel, not the rural Irish setting of Sally Diamond, but because there is so little demarcation between Ireland and the USA, there’s no real sense of disjointedness and it never feels like Ruby has moved that far away from her problems, in both a physical and mental sense.
Lovers of a taut psychological narrative will feel at home, though, the author gleefully playing with our emotions through the thoughts and actions of her characters – and leaving us feeling both frustrated and unsettled. Liz Nugent is not an writer who ploughs a single furrow, and here she takes delight in muddying the path at her leisure.
It’s a near impossible task to deliver something quite as haunting and different as Strange Sally Diamond, and in some ways I think Nugent decided not to try. Instead, we’re given plenty of the Irish author’s trademark twists and turns but none of the ‘what the…?’ moments that peppered her 2023 multi-award winner. Because of that, The Truth About Ruby Cooper is an interesting read, but not a book that’s destined to stay in my head for long.
Step back in time with Irish author Anna McPartlin’s The Silent Ones, set in the 1980s.
Penguin Sandycove
Print/Kindle/iBook
£8.99
CFL Rating: 3 Stars
