Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent (Penguin Sandycove, £14.99)
Sally doesn’t see why everyone is up in arms when she attempts to incinerate her adoptive father’s corpse. Psychiatrist Thomas Diamond, to whom she was case study as much as daughter and with whom she has lived a reclusive life in an isolated County Roscommon bungalow, specifically told her to “put [him] out with the bins”. He has left letters detailing what he knows of the horrific events that led up to her adoption, but we know, from a second narrator, that the truth is even worse … Nugent’s fifth novel is her best yet: evil perpetuates evil in a heartbreaking but humane tale of people damaged beyond repair.
