AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVEL 2025
'I couldn't put this book down'
Sheena Patel, author of I'm a Fan
'A powerful, moving, compelling, utterly enthralling debut'
Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13
'Perfectly pitched, surefooted, and charged with feeling'
Colin Barrett, author of Wild Houses
From the prize-winning author of Dance Move and Sweet Home, this is an astounding novel about intimate histories, class and money - and what being a parent means.
Meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh: three very different women from Belfast, but all mothers to 18-year-old boys.
Gorgeous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children's services charity, loves celebrity and prestige. When their sons are accused of sexually assaulting a friend, Misty Johnston, they'll come together to protect their children, leveraging all the powers they possess. But on her side, Misty has the formidable matriarch, Nan D, and her father, taxi-driver Boogie: an alliance not so easily dismissed.
Brutal, tender and rigorously intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, polyphonic presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland. It is also very funny.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Wendy Erskine is off doing her own, consummate thing. The Benefactors is a novel as perfectly pitched, surefooted, and charged with feeling as her gleaming, precise stories." - Colin Barrett
"In her first novel, [Erskine] revels in the possibilities of an expanded cast, yet controls the pace and framing with all the precision of a miniaturist. The result is a novel that feels like a balancing act: at once sprawling and meticulous, polyphonic and tonally coherent. The Benefactors is ambitiously structured, but functions in some ways as a short story with a novel around it. At the book's heart is a pivotal, life-altering moment. Gracefully flowing into and out of it are the day-to-day lives that the moment both springs from and distorts, rendered in a tapestry of third-person narration and unattributed interjections of monologue - a kind of community chorus, commenting and adding colour . . . Erskine's great gift is for character. Not a single figure in this novel feels contrived; all are complicatedly flawed and empathetically rendered . . . a work of great assurance and precision." - Sam Byers
"Wendy Erskine's writing is inimitable - so fresh, so sharp, so wry, so alive; so much contemporary fiction feels flat and fake in comparison. In all of its glorious polyphony, The Benefactors brims with humanity. It's got snap, it's got sparkle, it's got soul. All of Belfast is here, all of life. I adored it." - Lucy Caldwell
"I found Wendy Erskine's The Benefactors to be a profound and memorable novel. Its acuity is matched by the brilliance of its prose." - Adrian Duncan
"Wendy Erskine is one of the best writers working in Ireland right now and The Benefactors is all her own, astute and full of feeling." - Nicole Flattery
"A polyphonic, moving, funny masterpiece. A joy to read sentences like these from a writer as talented as this." - Sinéad Gleeson
"Books are made of words. And sentences. Of stories and sounds and of voices. The Benefactors is further proof that Erskine is a true master of all the above. There are absolutely loads of words in this book - every single one of them is well chosen - because Wendy Erskine chose them. The clue is in the title - with The Benefactors, Wendy Erskine has given us a gift." - Keiran Goddard
"Wendy Erskine is a formidable writer, an extraordinary, deliciously vivid storyteller with characters that leap off the page. The Benefactors is an outstanding debut novel, packed with sharp truths and succinct details exploring the way people judge each other, hurt each other and learn to love each other." - Salena Godden
"What a voice. What assurance and execution. Wendy Erskine writes like nobody else. The Benefactors is a masterful, memorable, electric novel that conveys a community of people and all their dramas pitch-perfectly, seemingly without manipulation, because the craft is deft and the feeling is real as all hell," - Caoilinn Hughes
"The Benefactors is a novel of trauma that speaks from all of its perspectives simultaneously. In its lack of judgement, and in the redemptive joy and sadness of its telling, it is a profound work of art." - David Keenan
"A powerful, moving, compelling, utterly enthralling debut novel from the excellent Wendy Erskine. The Benefactors follows the fallout from one young woman's awful experience of the young men around her, and explores the many ways in which lies are told, perpetuated, and excused. Wendy Erskine understands young people in all their complicated awfulness and brilliance, and the way she inhabits and carries such a range of troubled voices in this novel is a wonder. We're all better off for being able to read a novel as rich as this." - Jon McGregor
"The Benefactors is an astonishing novel from a writer at the height of her powers. There's not a sentence I don't believe, or a character I don't feel something for. Whole worlds are conjured, and through these worlds, a variousness of voices and perspectives that bring to life a plethora of lived experiences, often contradictory, but deeply human. Wendy Erskine is a true artist, and what a joy it is to read her." - Michael Magee
"An excellent novel, all those voices so vivid and precise, appropriately startling at times and incredibly smart and timely on class and privilege." - David Nicholls
"I couldn't put this book down.,Wendy has skilfully written herself out of the story completely, her hand has disappeared. As a reader, you are totally transported into these characters lives. They are living people and I missed them when I finished." - Sheena Patel
"A novel of exquisite detail and endless humanity. Even in their darkest moments, Erskine never lets go of her characters, never lets them be anything but alive on the page. I won't soon recover, and don't really want to, from the clarity and cold power of this book." - Ben Pester
"I miss it already. Even when they were being horrible bastards the characters were stirring my heart. Wendy evokes the grim gradations of class and wealth with such a clear eye and unerring hand. She's an incredible writer. All these voices so true and so loud in my ear. What a beautiful, hilarious blast of brilliance." - Donal Ryan
"A truly remarkable novel - The Benefactors is both intimate and panoramic, full of clear-eyed compassion and wry wit, and with a cast of characters so vividly drawn it feels like you've known them all your life. This is powerful, masterful storytelling by one of the most exciting writers at work today." - Colin Walsh
"In her first novel, [Erskine] revels in the possibilities of an expanded cast, yet controls the pace and framing with all the precision of a miniaturist. The result is a novel that feels like a balancing act: at once sprawling and meticulous, polyphonic and tonally coherent. The Benefactors is ambitiously structured, but functions in some ways as a short story with a novel around it. At the book's heart is a pivotal, life-altering moment. Gracefully flowing into and out of it are the day-to-day lives that the moment both springs from and distorts, rendered in a tapestry of third-person narration and unattributed interjections of monologue - a kind of community chorus, commenting and adding colour . . . Erskine's great gift is for character. Not a single figure in this novel feels contrived; all are complicatedly flawed and empathetically rendered . . . a work of great assurance and precision." - Sam Byers
"Wendy Erskine's writing is inimitable - so fresh, so sharp, so wry, so alive; so much contemporary fiction feels flat and fake in comparison. In all of its glorious polyphony, The Benefactors brims with humanity. It's got snap, it's got sparkle, it's got soul. All of Belfast is here, all of life. I adored it." - Lucy Caldwell
"I found Wendy Erskine's The Benefactors to be a profound and memorable novel. Its acuity is matched by the brilliance of its prose." - Adrian Duncan
"Wendy Erskine is one of the best writers working in Ireland right now and The Benefactors is all her own, astute and full of feeling." - Nicole Flattery
"A polyphonic, moving, funny masterpiece. A joy to read sentences like these from a writer as talented as this." - Sinéad Gleeson
"Books are made of words. And sentences. Of stories and sounds and of voices. The Benefactors is further proof that Erskine is a true master of all the above. There are absolutely loads of words in this book - every single one of them is well chosen - because Wendy Erskine chose them. The clue is in the title - with The Benefactors, Wendy Erskine has given us a gift." - Keiran Goddard
"Wendy Erskine is a formidable writer, an extraordinary, deliciously vivid storyteller with characters that leap off the page. The Benefactors is an outstanding debut novel, packed with sharp truths and succinct details exploring the way people judge each other, hurt each other and learn to love each other." - Salena Godden
"What a voice. What assurance and execution. Wendy Erskine writes like nobody else. The Benefactors is a masterful, memorable, electric novel that conveys a community of people and all their dramas pitch-perfectly, seemingly without manipulation, because the craft is deft and the feeling is real as all hell," - Caoilinn Hughes
"The Benefactors is a novel of trauma that speaks from all of its perspectives simultaneously. In its lack of judgement, and in the redemptive joy and sadness of its telling, it is a profound work of art." - David Keenan
"A powerful, moving, compelling, utterly enthralling debut novel from the excellent Wendy Erskine. The Benefactors follows the fallout from one young woman's awful experience of the young men around her, and explores the many ways in which lies are told, perpetuated, and excused. Wendy Erskine understands young people in all their complicated awfulness and brilliance, and the way she inhabits and carries such a range of troubled voices in this novel is a wonder. We're all better off for being able to read a novel as rich as this." - Jon McGregor
"The Benefactors is an astonishing novel from a writer at the height of her powers. There's not a sentence I don't believe, or a character I don't feel something for. Whole worlds are conjured, and through these worlds, a variousness of voices and perspectives that bring to life a plethora of lived experiences, often contradictory, but deeply human. Wendy Erskine is a true artist, and what a joy it is to read her." - Michael Magee
"An excellent novel, all those voices so vivid and precise, appropriately startling at times and incredibly smart and timely on class and privilege." - David Nicholls
"I couldn't put this book down.,Wendy has skilfully written herself out of the story completely, her hand has disappeared. As a reader, you are totally transported into these characters lives. They are living people and I missed them when I finished." - Sheena Patel
"A novel of exquisite detail and endless humanity. Even in their darkest moments, Erskine never lets go of her characters, never lets them be anything but alive on the page. I won't soon recover, and don't really want to, from the clarity and cold power of this book." - Ben Pester
"I miss it already. Even when they were being horrible bastards the characters were stirring my heart. Wendy evokes the grim gradations of class and wealth with such a clear eye and unerring hand. She's an incredible writer. All these voices so true and so loud in my ear. What a beautiful, hilarious blast of brilliance." - Donal Ryan
"A truly remarkable novel - The Benefactors is both intimate and panoramic, full of clear-eyed compassion and wry wit, and with a cast of characters so vividly drawn it feels like you've known them all your life. This is powerful, masterful storytelling by one of the most exciting writers at work today." - Colin Walsh
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