The Benefactors

'Brims with humanity . . . I adored it'
Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days

'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

In The Benefactors we meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh - very different women but all mothers to 18-year-old boys. Glamorous 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 the celebrity and prestige this brings her. They do not know each other yet, but when their sons are accused of sexually assaulting Misty Johnston, whose family lacks the wealth and social-standing of their own, they'll leverage all the power of their position to protect their children.


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. Brutal, tender and rigorously intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, polyphonic presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland. It is also very funny.

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, author of These Days
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, author of Reservoir 13
'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, author of Wild Houses
Wendy Erskine flourishes her captivating style in The Benefactors, with a depth of insight which at times feels like epiphany. Erskine actualises riveting, propulsive humanity in this mosaic of a community, achieving a distinction of narrative empathy that gleams on the page. The prose conveys profound insight with such lightness, the characters a richness of nuance and rare humour. The Benefactors is an essential novel, and Wendy Erskine an essential novelist. It is an inspired testament to survival - I was incredibly moved by it. -- Peter Scalpello, author of Limbic

Wendy Erskine is the author of two short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move. She was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize, longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and she received the Butler Literary Award and the Edge Hill Readers' Choice Award. She edited the art anthology well I just kind of like it. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is a frequent broadcaster and interviewer, and works as a secondary school teacher in Belfast. The Benefactors is her debut novel.

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