Roisín O’Donnell’s NESTING: The Slow Strangulation of Control
- elichvar
- Apr 11
- 5 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Roisín O’Donnell
Nesting
Algonquin Books / February 2025 / 400 pp / $29.00 Hardcover
Reviewed by pine breaks / April 2025
Nesting is Roisín O’Donnell’s first full-length work of fiction, following her acclaimed short story collection, Wild Quiet, which was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Though best known for literary fiction, she has also written speculative fiction and magical realism, seamlessly blending genres to explore themes of identity, resilience, and belonging. O’Donnell traces the origins of Nesting to a commissioned short story on the theme of “independence” for RTÉ Radio One, Ireland’s national broadcaster. From that seed grew this novel—an unflinching, deeply visceral exploration of coercion, the slow erosion of self within an intimate relationship, and the labyrinthine struggle women face to reclaim autonomy.
From the opening, Nesting thrusts the reader into Ciara's life, mid-struggle: a relentless balancing act between parenting two toddlers, with a third on the way, and placating a husband, Ryan, who demands devotion while offering none in return. A seaside outing, rather than offering a moment of ease, mutates into an emotional minefield. Ciara fixates on perceived inadequacies: her battered car against Ryan’s gleaming, unused jeep; the children’s too-small wetsuits and their disheveled state after ice cream. Ryan commandeers the moment, dragging his daughters into the freezing water, overriding both Ciara’s protests and the children’s discomfort. The message is unmistakable. Ryan’s fatherhood, like his love, is performative, an image to uphold. His rare helpful acts arrive dressed as magnanimous favors, leaving Ciara to bear the physical load of maintaining a home and family while enduring the charged silences that stretch between them.
Each of Ryan’s words chips away at Ciara’s reality. His arsenal: shame, guilt, and the subtle, persistent suggestion that she is incapable. That her concerns are irrational. That her perceptions are flawed. The novel unfolds in moments of quiet devastation, the creeping dread of a woman drowning in a life she no longer recognizes:
A headache is building at the base of her skull. Her body, flooded by the uncanny sense that she’s trapped. Stuck in this bright day forever. She’s invisible, walking unseen through the crowds. Other women are happily herding children, holding partners hands or strolling with friends, talking. Her little meandering family blends in perfectly, so why are these dark thoughts swirling again?
The novel unspools Ciara’s struggle in harrowing detail: soothing Ryan’s fragile ego, justifying his behavior to herself and others, finally grasping that survival demands escape. Their whirlwind romance—three months from first meeting to moving in, marriage, and pregnancy—once seemed proof of divine passion. In retrospect, it reads as a warning. This is the first front in the battle of escaping Ryan: overcoming her rationalization for his behavior.
The resulting legal battle reveals the extent of Ryan’s manipulation. Each conversation with her solicitor peels back another layer of the cage he built. It is in these conversations that the novel masterfully weaves past and present. O’Donnell layers in these revelations seamlessly, enabling the reader to absorb them almost instinctively, as if by osmosis.
The author’s prose oscillates between stark realism and moments of quiet poetry, never indulging in stylistic excess but wielding language with precision. O’Donnell, after all, is an acclaimed and award-winning short-form storyteller:
It was Saoirse at the refuge who advised her to start journaling. Her notebook is almost full now. Sentences, phrases that woke her in the middle of the night sometimes, her uncertain handwriting becoming faster, stronger, filling up the pages. She sees now that writing out a story is unknotting it. Flattening the scroll. Deciphering the codex. Making it clear. Put words into the right order and this is what you can do: break the spell.
Nesting exposes Ryan’s menace—not through overt violence, but in his methodical dismantling of Ciara’s agency. Anytime he enters a scene, especially when he tries to inveigle his way back into Ciara’s life after she has dared to leave the family home, there is a visceral urge to hiss at the page. Ryan is the most insidious of abusers, needing no fists. His weapons are accusations, veiled threats, and an omnipresent suggestion that they are the ones being wronged. He is a master manipulator, wielding victimhood at every turn, never questioning his own role in the failing relationship, twisting reality until Ciara doubts her own perceptions. When she dares to leave, he tries to slither back:
There’s something wild in his eyes tonight. They dart madly across her face, scanning for something lost. His jaw clicks. His hands roam, clenching, grabbing. ‘Why don’t you give us another chance?’ Again, her words catch. ‘I just—’ ‘The way you lie to me, abandon me, subject me to your sister’s abuse. How would you feel if someone treated one of the kids the way you’ve treated me?’ Now his face is close against hers. His big hand strokes her neck. ‘I’d want to kill that person.’ His black eyes bore into hers. From outside, in the darkening garden, a crow screeches. ‘I’d want to fucking kill them.’
As a tour de force, Nesting transcends the psychological warfare of an abusive relationship. O’Donnell layers the narrative with a sharp critique of the broken systems and logistical labyrinths women fleeing domestic abuse must navigate: the crushing bureaucracy of social welfare and legal aid; the precariousness of temporary shelters; the difficulty of finding long-term accommodation in an overcooked private housing sector, where demand for affordable housing far outstrips supply; the near-impossible task of reentering the workforce after years of caregiving, all while juggling childcare and the relentless financial strain of single motherhood. O’Donnell lays bare the systemic failures that make leaving an abusive partner not just difficult but often untenable. Ciara’s struggle mirrors that of countless women trapped not just by their abusers but by the institutions that fail them.
Beyond logistics, Ciara stumbles through the raw terrain of relationships post-breakup, where time, opportunity, and self-worth battle for air. Platonic connections feel strained, conversations laced with judgment or pity. Intimacy is fraught—who to trust, how to feel seen beyond the damage? The specter of Ryan lingers in unexpected ways, shaping how she moves through the world, how she lets others in, and of course how to manage access to the father of her children.
As a harrowing, unrelenting portrait of coercion and survival that lingers long after the final page, Nesting refuses neat resolutions. O’Donnell does not offer easy catharsis. Instead, she crafts—through pared-back, urgent, deceptively simple prose—something more enduring: an unflinching gaze into the abyss of control, and the hard, uncertain climb toward freedom. Ciara’s journey is one of survival, but also reconstruction. To leave is not the end. It is the beginning of another fight: to reclaim selfhood in a world that too often demands women disappear.
pine breaks identifies as a Black man, non-dualist, meditator, Afro-Caribbean, ruralist, bread-baker, grower of vegetables, pro-alternative economies, bare-footist, sometimes media academic, freelance writer and author of race and social-class based fiction. He is most content when identifying as a being from the Universe. pinebreaks.com