“Every person has a secret interior life that’s unknowable to their spouse, parents, siblings, friends,” says Liz Nugent. “You may think you know your mother, but you can be sure she has a whole side to her you’ll never know anything about. Most peoples’ interior selves are pretty mundane, but occasionally, you’ll find some people have a very dark seam inside that’s only unleashed when they’re trapped, or forced into an extreme situation.”
A dark secret life is at the center of Nugent’s debut novel, Unraveling Oliver (Scout, Aug.), her first book to be published in the U.S. and a BookExpo Adult Buzz book. When it was originally published in Ireland in 2014, it became a #1 bestseller and won Best Crime Fiction at the Irish Book Awards. The novel has been translated into seven languages.
The Oliver of the title is a handsome, charismatic children’s book author. He lives a privileged life in a Dublin suburb until the evening he beats his wife so viciously that she’s left in a coma. In the aftermath, as everyone tries to make sense of the attack, Oliver begins to tell his story, as do those he’s come in contact with over the past five decades.
Nugent admits to being fascinated by very flawed men. She finds her inspiration for these bad figures in the obituary sections of the Irish Times, Daily Telegraph, and New York Times. “Obituaries are incredibly useful,” she says. “The whole Nazi element in the book, as well as a pivotal character, came about after I read the obituary of the man who’d been prefect general of Vichy France.”
“Novelist” is Nugent’s third career. In her first, as stage manager for the Irish dance company Riverdance, she toured the world for 15 years. In 2003, she became an associate writer on the longest-running Irish TV soap opera Fair City. In writing for soaps, says Nugent, “you need to make sure people will tune in the next day, so you have to leave each episode on a knife edge. And that’s what I’ve tried to do with each chapter in Unraveling Oliver.”
Nugent took a two-year leave of absence to write the novel. Even after its success, she returned to Fair City, but she lasted only four months. “It felt like every day was a day away from [book] writing,” she says. Writing days are precious to Nugent, as she can type with only one hand. A childhood accident left her with dystonia, a neurological disorder that causes uncontrollable and painful muscle spasms. As a result she could no longer use her right hand to write. “That’s why I’m such a slow writer and why my novels are short. It costs me physically to write. But it’s certainly not right to complain considering all the writers like Shakespeare and Jane Austen who wrote with one hand and a feather,” she says.
Nugent may be used to spending her life behind the scenes. But she’ll be in the foreground for the foreseeable future. Scout will publish her second novel, Lying in Wait, which was also a #1 bestseller in Ireland, in May 2018.
Today, 10–10:45 a.m. Liz Nugent will participate in the Adult Author’s Buzz Panel at the Uptown Stage.
Today, 11–11:45 a.m. Nugent will sign at the S&S booth (1420).
