Het is een schrijnend verhaal, een verhaal dat indruk maakt, empathie oproept en boeit, en hoewel ik op sommige punten in het boek graag meer interactie en een grotere rol voor Legs had willen zien en ik af en toe die sterke connectie met de personages een beetje verloor, is dit een rauw en eerlijk verhaal dat beklijft. His widely acclaimed debut Montpelier Parade was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and for Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Legs, who by this time has endured enough abuse, takes a lighter to the cleric and sets him on fire. Juno attends Catholic school, typical for Dubliners, where the nuns and priests use humiliation and physical punishment to discipline their charges, punishment that has no effect on the schoolyard bullies who taunt Juno and another equally beleaguered student, Seán.

We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. And although I DO much prefer this UK cover - that looks suspiciously like American actress Kristy McNichol on the cover, circa 1980!However, the book can be unrelentingly bleak at times, and it can be a bit of a chore to parse given all of the slang that’s used. This is a tale of what it’s like to live in the middle of a figurative warzone, with no respite to the suffering a person must endure. My bookclub tagline for this read was “bleakness” and that is a spot on description for the essential vibe of this novel. And still each evening, the [prison] chaplain would come to him; the chaplain believed that burning Father was an accident and Legs felt free to tell almost all of himself.

Legs is her pal, a young lad who Juno steps in to defend at school when he is being bullied and humiliated by a nun and priest. Juno finally comes into grips with Legs being gay, and though the physical love is completely one sided, their love is so pure and emotional that it tore into my psyche. Suffice it to say that it covers about a dozen years of a very special, though not romantic, relationship between two bruised and broken youngsters in 1980's Dublin- and it WILL break your heart.One day, Legs decides he has had enough of the abuse and gets into the kind of trouble that they send youngsters away to juvenile detention for. In one of the most moving sections, Juno finds herself sleeping rough and begging for money on a Dublin street, after walking out of the family home and being turned away by her estranged sister. I’m with Legs,” Juno says throughout the novel, “I’m with him,” until their friendship, and the story, arrive at a deeply moving conclusion that will shatter even the hardest heart.

Geary finds beauty in the most unlikely places, and in an often brutal story, with more than its fair share of small tragedies, he offers balm along the way; a reminder that humanity is everywhere, if we take the time to look, and a clear demonstration that family is less about genetics and more about love. Her only friend and ally is ‘Legs,’ a loner ostracized by the Sister for his beauty and verbally abused by the Father for his sexual orientation. My thanks to the author, Karl Geary, and the publisher, Penguin Random House, for my ARC of this novel.Beautifully written by the Irish author, Karl Geary, with many poignant and alarming situations for such young children to live through and be subjected to…from caustic, horrific neighbors to strict and punishing Catholic religious leaders, which leads to their own overworked and underpaid strict parents (most likely uneducated), who barely sustain a living and survive their forced inertia and poverty. Poignant to the nth degree; these two luckless souls give in to the magnetic pull of mutual exclusion to find a sense of place and peace in the company of the other. I lay under the tree and carefully arranged the flowers on my chest, and stayed in the grass for the longest time.