{"id":3889,"date":"2024-09-26T17:28:05","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T17:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3889"},"modified":"2024-10-12T17:37:07","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T17:37:07","slug":"nesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3889","title":{"rendered":"Nesting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Even during her sly, vicious husband Ryan\u2019s \u201cgood\u201d moments, Ciara feels \u201cpart of her body (toe tips, ear lobes, the backs of her knees) is listening, tense, on high alert.\u201d And in his bad moments, \u201cThe toppled chair. The smashed bulb. The broken handle. Her bones and blood.\u201d She\u2019s left before, but his rage at her absence was too dangerous to endure. But when she sees a new opportunity, she takes her two small daughters and flees. Here the reader will begin to understand the naivete of \u201cwhy doesn\u2019t she just leave?\u201d (Why doesn\u2019t anybody ever ask why he doesn\u2019t \u201cjust\u201d leave?). Dublin\u2019s rental market is impossible, so Ciara and the children are homeless, forced to stay in a cramped hotel room provided by the city. Ciara, who is pregnant with her third child, has no job, at controlling Ryan\u2019s insistence, of course. Her mother-in-law tells her that she\u2019s going to hell for treating \u201cpoor Ryan-Patrick\u201d this way. Child support is non-existent, and Ryan is determined to take full custody of the children even though he appears to hate them and has never lifted a finger to care for them. Watching Ciara claw her way out of this is a gripping view of endurance, terror, bravery and the small and large kindnesses that make her life bearable. <strong>The characters here are superbly drawn, the dialog spot on, and I can\u2019t wait for more from this debut novelist.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even during her sly, vicious husband Ryan\u2019s \u201cgood\u201d moments, Ciara feels \u201cpart of her body (toe tips, ear lobes, the backs of her knees) is listening, tense, on high alert.\u201d&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[116,163,180,101,15,59,84,122],"class_list":["post-3889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-21st-century","tag-book-of-the-week","tag-debut","tag-family-life","tag-ireland","tag-literary","tag-marriage-divorce","tag-world-literature"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Nesting-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Nesting.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}