Juno Loves Legs

Product Information

While squatting in a council flat, Juno watches Legs shuffle down to the little red phone box outside, wearing his dead gran’s pink housecoat and a silly hat, with a pocket full of 10p pieces, trying to sort out their next meal, the next chapter of their lives. Juno finds work and tries to put her life back together even as it is apparent that perhaps Legs’ life is conversely falling apart. 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.

While unsurprising in many ways, ticking all the boxes of Irish sadness - alcoholism, violence, and the abuses of the Catholic church an approach that could be viewed as a weakness. As the teenagers move beyond the quiet cruelties of a Catholic education, and into an even darker and seemingly crueller world, against the odds their friendship endures. If you are in the mood for a novel that will rip your heart out and slap you repeatedly in the face with it, have I got a recommendation for you .Set during the political and social unrest of the 1980s, as families struggled to survive and their children struggled to be free, this beautiful, vivid novel of childhood friendship is about being young, being hurt, being seen and, most of all, being loved. 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. The two find their way from the backstreets and city’s pubs to its underground parties and squats, where, on the verge of adulthood, they find a breathing space to begin their real lives.

Thanks to NetGalley, Dreamscape Publishing, and the author, Geary, for this advanced copy, which I wholeheartedly loved and will be pondering long after my next read. But because as Sean comes of age as Legs, his effeminate, delicate beauty causes ire amongst those who are homophobic and repressed: especially Sister and Father who mock and hate him for no other reason than out of their own fear and ignorance, “His narrow shoulders shook then, though there was no sound, as if it had been turned down, the way you could with the news if you didn’t like what was being said” (Geary 249). That all changes one day when Legs, struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality, is harassed by the parish priest because of his sexual inclinations.It might be the storyline that tears at your emotions, or perhaps the idiosyncratic characters who capture your heart. Not one to be pushed around, Juno continually gets into fights to defend herself, and when her tormentors start to pick on Seán — whom she nicknames Legs — she stands up for him. 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. The tropes of Irish tragedy arrive with predictable regularity in these pages, but the raw, lilting poetry of Juno’s voice provides a series of heartbreaking revelations. That was what Legs showed in the game where he showed me his and I showed him mine and we told each other our stories.

It isn’t a happy story, overall, but there is so much love, the kind of love that allows each other to be who they are and do what they need to do. I don’t really want to say too much more about the plot as it’s best just to immerse yourself in it and allow it to unfold.

I lay there as long as I could, before shooting up and shaking myself and running through the trees, out onto the main road, breathless towards the library”. Karl Geary’s sophomore novel flirts with and then darkly subverts the marriage plot, killing off the nuclear family in an attempt to remake it, with a difference. I did say I’d been avoiding Irish novels for a few years but so pleased to have found this book with thanks to Bookclub . Een verhaal over vallen en opstaan, geheimen en ondanks je eigen ellende alle knelpunten in het leven van de ander willen oplossen. They are the oddballs, misfits and outcasts, and your heart goes out to both of them as we learn of their imperfections and vulnerabilities due to poverty and difficult (near impossible) home lives.

Legs, meanwhile, has a flair for drawing, and although an exhibit of his work — arranged by an unscrupulous individual — never comes to fruition, we’re led to believe his talent might one day amount to something tangible. It is less about place and time ( maybe to its detriment ) than about the building of an unshakable bond between two outsiders that have no one else on their side. Een verhaal waarin ellende regelmatig de boventoon voert, maar dat door het zoeken naar licht in de duisternis en de liefde die weerklinkt zeker een aanrader is voor liefhebbers van indringende romans! As difficult as it all is, it’s these very experiences that have prepared Juno and Legs to face their futures. 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.This book is memorable and deeply touching, as two misfits find each other through troubled times and know real love in a very unloving and tough world. Juno en Seán – Legs – zitten bij elkaar in de klas op een streng katholieke school in de armste wijk van de stad, en wanneer Juno voor hem opkomt, is dat de start van een hechte, onvoorwaardelijke vriendschap. I may not have loved Juno Loves Legs as much as I should have, maybe, but I’ll bet that there is someone out there who might. The book will, I think, have an extra special resonance for Irish people, and Dubliners in particular.