Strange Sally Diamond

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 Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent



I want to preface this post by stating that Liz Nugent is one of my favourite authors of all time, therefore read my thoughts below with more than un peu de sel (I'm learning French here - a pinch of salt), albeit warranted praise given the Irish author's first-class narrative skills. The book started with five pages of reviews and praise from other renown authors and not a single lie was uttered. 

A supreme skill of the author is encapsulating a steady plot, not just to get the reader to a resolution at the end of the book, but also unravelling the main character on a journey through their life. In fact, the detail (or what we'd expect to be the killer plot twist) is usually provided upfront in the early stages of the book. In this story, we're told in the blurb already that Sally's father has died, and she has followed his instructions to the tee by putting his dead body out with the rubbish. We then follow Sally's life as she steps into a world outside of the isolation of her house and without her father's equivocal protection, which is accompanied by a lot of learning, unlearning and unpacking of the character's past to understand how she became the person she is and how that shapes her future.

I enjoyed that the focus was placed on Sally's story, and not so much the supporting characters. Authors often want to breathe life into the supporting characters through storylines that tend to divert us from the main plot, which risks the reader resigning from the book. While the characters play a great role as support, I don't want to get into their lives' detail unless it adds to the main character's plot. (This is pretty ironic given I once complained about a supporting character serving no role apart from being the main character's venting wall. But that had more to do with not understanding the basis of their friendship when nothing in the book validated it.)

I digress. Liz has once again outperformed herself in this contemporary killer as her best work to date! If you enjoyed Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (review here), you'll definitely find a friend in Strange Sally Diamond. 

Rating: 4.75/5

TW: Kidnapping, Sexual Assault
Location: South Africa

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