Unravelling Oliver cover art

Unravelling Oliver

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Unravelling Oliver

By: Liz Nugent
Narrated by: Sam O'Mahony, Roy McMillan, Kevin Hely, Tracy Keating, Stephen Hogan, Kathy O'Brien, Steven Laverty, Michele Moran
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent.

Winner - IBA Crime Fiction Book of the Year.

Liz Nugent's gripping audiobook of psychological suspense, Unravelling Oliver, is a complex and elegant study of the making of a sociopath in the tradition of Barbara Vine and Patricia Highsmith.

Oliver Ryan is a handsome and charismatic success story. He lives in the suburbs with his wife, Alice, who illustrates his award-winning children's books and gives him her unstinting devotion. Their life together is one of enviable privilege and ease - enviable until, one evening after supper, Oliver attacks Alice and beats her into a coma. In the aftermath, as everyone tries to make sense of his astonishing act of savagery, Oliver tells his story. So do those whose paths he has crossed over five decades. What unfolds is a story of shame, envy, breathtaking deception and masterful manipulation.

Only Oliver knows the lengths to which he has had to go to get the life to which he felt entitled. But even he is in for a shock when the past catches up with him.

Liz Nugent has worked in Irish film, theatre and television for most of her adult life. She is an award-winning writer of radio and television drama and has written short stories for children and adults.

Unravelling Oliver is her first novel.

©2017 Liz Nugent (P)2017 Penguin Audio Psychological Thriller & Suspense Scary Exciting Suspense

Listeners also enjoyed...

 There's Something I Have to Tell You cover art
The Truth About Julia cover art
My Real Children cover art
The Vanishing of Margaret Small cover art
All Her Fault cover art
The Perfect Girlfriend cover art
Elantris (3 of 3) [Dramatized Adaptation] cover art
The Shadow of What Was Lost cover art
New Spring cover art
Lord of All Things cover art
Forging Divinity cover art
Girls of Riyadh cover art
Dungeon Lord cover art
No Fourth River. A Novel Based on a True Story. A Profoundly Moving Read About a Woman's Fight for Survival. cover art
A Warrior's Path cover art

Critic reviews

"Truly excellent, beautifully written...strongly recommended." (Sophie Hannah)
"Compelling, clever and dark, unlike any other psychological thriller you will have read before...you'll gobble it up in one go." ( Heat Magazine)
"Incredibly brilliant." (Marian Keyes)
All stars
Most relevant
Not for the first time recently I find myself debating what constitutes a thriller.  This one certainly opens with a real punch of an opening line which I won't quote because it is one of the most powerful moments in the book and one of the biggest "signals" towards the gradual unravelling of Oliver.  It's a single sentence that with a jolt takes you from your comfortable listening place into the mind of Oliver.  In those few words I realised that I was in the hands of a talented author. What follows is a classy set of narrators who take us through decades of history before and after that event to gradually disentangle the web of Oliver's life.

It is simply a story and does not moralise or instruct, it merely guides us through a classic question of nature versus nurture.  It's largely very gentle but I found that the structure of the book was very well suited to the larger cast of narrators.  Mostly, and I am no great judge of accents, I felt they gave an authentic glimpse into an Ireland when prejudices against homosexuality and single mothers was considerably more prevalent.  It revealed how Oliver was forged between neglect, constraint and opportunity and where it took him and those he knew.

I don't actually want to write more as this is a fairly brief and mostly gentle "human" tale that I really enjoyed.  The central character is one you will likely develop very strong views about though they will fluctuate because in the final analysis the purpose of the story is to form a judgement on him.  I'd call it engaging, original and very well crafted.  I wouldn't personally call it a "thriller", more of a "drama" as Nugent's approach to weaving the threads of her story is actually quite subtle in a mesmerising fashion.

Engaging, Original and Very Well Crafted

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
what a great book. thoroughly entertaining. it travels along at a great pace. it develops characters in a sympathetic but not saccharin way. the language used is perfect for the time and place and it evokes great mental pictures. I thoroughly enjoyed the performance as well and would listen to the readers again in a heartbeat.
Great book. (when's the follow up?)

the sins of the father....

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Not what I expected at all , and can’t decide how I feel about this book . Certainly kept me listening and couldn’t wait to listen , but same time I’m not sure if I feel slightly disappointed.

Different

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
From the start we know that Oliver has, to the great surprise of those who know him, savagely attacked his wife. However, this is not a crime novel, but more an in-depth analysis of why a man, with no history of violence, should explode in this way. Gradually his story is revealed in snippets gleaned from the testimony of those who know him and from his own thoughts. Although Oliver is a cold, unsympathetic character my attention never flagged and I was gripped by the slowly unfolding narrative and eager to learn more what made this man the person he turned out to be.

The book has been compared to the kind of psychological approach favoured by Ruth Rendell and it is certainly more akin to that style than a simple crime novel.

There are several narrators who voice the different characters and this adds veracity to the impression that this is a real story.

Absorbing stories revealing a complex personality

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Only if I knew that the friend was a big fan of guessing games!

Who was your favorite character and why?

Oliver - he was the only character who wasn't mostly a purpose-designed stereotype.

What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

For me, the narrators added nothing. The book is written in a flat, even style and the narration followed suit.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

It would be better as a TV series because of its episodic construction.

Any additional comments?

I've given four stars because the book is undoubtedly quite a good example of its genre. I bought it on the daily deal in the knowledge that it would probably not be my cup of tea. I can't help thinking that the story would have been better told in a sequential style beginning with Oliver's birth and with Oliver himself as the story-teller. The time-lapse fragmentation with regular hints about revelations yet to come became, for me, highly irritating. The story only came to life in the final few chapters and I can't help wondering if the book turned out differently from the author's original intention. For me, it is the story of one man's blighted life and the damage which he accidentally causes to others and I'm not sure that the book should be described as a crime story.

It's good if you like this kind of thing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews