Juno Loves Legs

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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. It's an ode to love, to the salvation of friendship, and to the families we build when our own families fail us.

The dialogue has a syncopated rhythm to it that I found a little jarring at times but I loved the book so much I just didn’t dwell on it. By the time I finished Shuggie I had a headache and was miserable but with Juno there was so much hope. While Legs is in jail, Juno’s mam is killed in a car accident, and her sister Derry, who’d been ostracized from the family, moves back home with her kids to care for her widowed father.Set against the backdrop of Dublin in the 1980s, a place of political, social and religious change, the friends yearn for an unbound life and together they begin to fight to take up the space of who they truly are.

In gorgeous, effortless prose, Karl Geary bears witness to those who, like his protagonists, are invisible and voiceless.I concur with Douglas Stuart, the Shuggie Bain author who provides the cover endorsement - it broke my heart and I didn’t want it to end. Both Juno and Legs are shunned and bullied by classmates, and the priest in charge is even worse, shaming them in front of the classmates, making their lives even more difficult. It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance.

It is about a young girl named Juno who is whip-smart and brave and the relationship she has with a bullied boy named Seán (who she has nicknamed “Legs”) who is, from the start, branded as different in his sexuality. In een toegankelijke, nietsontziende en beschouwende stijl laat de auteur je kennismaken met zijn complexe personages en met de ruige, moeilijke en regelmatig hartverscheurende omstandigheden waarin zij moeten opgroeien. Geary uses gorgeous prose, full of Irish lilt and hard-edged slang, to describe bleak childhoods as harsh as any found in a Dickens novel . But their bond grows even closer as they are the only ones who seem to truly know and care for each other, until they are forced apart after an incident, and lose contact for some time, but eventually find each other. Juno Loves Legs is the story of that friendship, in its many incarnations, as seen through the eyes of Juno.

As I often do with deeply affecting books about love- I cried, and wept for what could have been for Juno’s love for Legs. Geary often finds poetry in Juno’s plainspoken narration, whether in lucid reflections on the brutality at the school or in Juno’s openhearted wonder at Dublin .