Sally Diamond is most definitely strange but she narrates her story very clearly; there is little room for ambiguity especially where Sally is concerned. My only advice to prospective readers is not to start this novel until you have plenty of time to devote to it; my recurring thought was, ‘Just one more chapter. I’ll read just one more chapter…’ To say I was hooked from Chapter One is an understatement.

Sally Diamond lives with her father. She has always been strange, ‘a weirdo’ the cruel girls at school called her. As an adult, most locals thought she was deaf mute but she wasn’t; it was a device she employed to avoid having to speak to people. At the start of this novel, she is forty-two years old. Her gauche naivety and habit of saying things exactly as they are, can be both excruciating and funny. It’s a gentle humour, though, which does not mock this ‘emotionally deficient’ character. She has simply not yet learned the art of tact and the social awareness needed to navigate life - and that is not her fault.

It is her disturbing background which becomes the nub of the narrative and Nugent certainly knows how to keep a reader engrossed.

When her father dies (of pancreatic cancer), at home, in his own bed, she follows what she believes were his instructions and incinerates his body in the barn. He’d always told her ‘to throw me out with the rubbish’ and she knew no better than to take him at his word. Why then, all the fuss? When people notice he’s missing, suddenly, Sally’s peaceful life is shattered by authorities and interfering people who only have her best interests at heart.

Sally’s clarity of mind and her misunderstanding of the world around her is magnetic to the reader and so far, I’ve given nothing away. It is her disturbing background which becomes the nub of the narrative and Nugent certainly knows how to keep a reader engrossed.

A ‘weirdo’ who burns her father’s body attracts attention and children are quick to make fun of her while adults are quick to judge. The reader’s sympathy, however, remains with Sally.

As her background is slowly revealed, it appears her childhood was the stuff of nightmares and at times, Nugent pulls no punches as she describes the brutal treatment endured in captivity by Sally and her birth mother. It is misogyny of the worst kind, yet it is necessary detail, not gratuitous. It seems Sally, a complex character, was ‘saved’ and legally adopted by the psychiatrist who was treating her, and his wife who was a GP. It took very special people to take on such a problem child. We join the narrative after her adoptive mother has died and Sally still lives at home – still captive but in a different way.

It is her disturbing background which becomes the nub of the narrative and Nugent certainly knows how to keep a reader engrossed.

As the narrative progresses and we follow Sally’s development and improved social interaction, the chapters start to alternate between Sally’s story and that of the brother she cannot remember. Peter lives on the other side of the world and his is a strange tale, too, although he doesn’t realise for a long time how much he was manipulated by the father he thought he loved. As the truth is revealed to him, his life also changes. He comes to see his father for the monster he was even though he cannot help but remember him also as the loving, protective parent he believed him to be.

Two distinct paths but Sally and Peter are destined to meet and when they do, other relatives also emerge. How do they all cope with the truth which has been hidden for so long? The ending is not what you would expect but there is a flicker of hope that one character, while not unscathed, is slightly less damaged than the rest.

Nugent explores psychology, the impact of childhood trauma, of lives ruined forever by the sadistic treatment endured at the hands of one man, one monster who must himself have been sick. There is, fleetingly, the hint of a reason for his behaviour but it is deliberately downplayed, I felt, so as not to allow the reader to feel any sympathy for him. His torture, both physical and mental, of innocent victims, even of the son he professed to love, is disturbing and cannot be justified by anyone.

This is a compelling and deeply moving read, beautifully written, chilling, and bittersweet.


Strange Sally Diamond is published by Penguin