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Bog child
By Dowd, Siobhan
Publishers Summary:
In 1981, the height of Ireland's "Troubles," eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog.
- ISBN
- 978-0-38575-170-4
- Publisher
REVIEWS
School Library Journal
Reviewed on August 1, 2008
Gr 9-Up It is 1981, and 18-year-old Fergus lives on the border between Northern Ireland and the south. His older brother, Joe, a member of the Provisional IRA, is jailed at Long Kesh and joins a hunger strike. The family is traumatized, and Fergus does his best to comfort his mother and to convince Joe that his "sacrifice" for the cause is not worth it. Fergus has been pressured (blackmailed) to smuggle packages for the IRA, but wants nothing more than to leave Ireland and study to become a doctor. His life becomes even more complicated w...Log In or Sign Up to Read More
Junior Library Guild
Reviewed on September 1, 2008
is an impeccably crafted novel about family, sacrifice, and the pains of growing up. While many of its plot elements are specific to 1980s Ireland, Siobhan Dowd grounds Fergus's shifting emotions in the universal language of the body and the senses: "Fergus sat back and shut his eyes, listening to the hum of the tyres on the road and imagining the sound as the endless lapping of the sea. . . . Something like peace came down on him." Dowd's lyricism helps ensure t...Log In or Sign Up to Read More
