Juno Loves Legs

Product Information

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. 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. 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.

Juno and the friend she nicknames Legs encounter poverty and cruelty aplenty, but also moments of grace, and Geary’s writing is lovely. After losing her mother to a bus accident, Juno finds herself witnessing Legs committing a crime against Father that would change their friendship forever. She's loved him since their first encounter at school in Dublin, where she fought the playground bullies for him. I've just finished reading Juno Loves Legs (to be published April 18, 2023) and am reminded that books, like moments in time, meet us and then pass away.Young friendship takes on all the world's challenges—love, art, family, the simple and overwhelming task of survival—with tragic, poignant results. Still, Juno Loves Legs may be of interest to Anglophiles and those who want to be challenged by their fiction. Depressed by poverty and social isolation, Juno experiences moments of peace by burying herself in the woods with flowers and pretending to be dead.

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!

It certainly doesn't 'ruin' the book if you know about it beforehand - but I didn't see it coming till quite late in the game, so it came as a pleasant surprise. Filled with loss and longing, it is by turns brutal and tender, and in the end, utterly devastating.

I settled in and performed my magic trick, putting one upturned hand out and I was invisible,” she says. The characters are three-dimensional and sympathetic as they struggle to overcome the cruel circumstances of their lives . 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. After he is committed to a reform school, Juno moves out and becomes a street walker, sex worker, wandering aimlessly in a Dublin that seems to be out of a Dickens and Joyce novel, its image at odds with anything green or beautiful that Ireland seems to offer. In gorgeous, effortless prose, Karl Geary bears witness to those who, like his protagonists, are invisible and voiceless.

The book is also an ode to living in poverty of sorts — the life Juno has lived is not an easy one, and, in many ways, Juno Loves Legs can be read as a tragedy.

PS: why are the UK covers of books always much better and more appropriate than their US counterparts? She's loved him since their first encounter at school in Dublin, the time she fought the playground bullies for him. I liked Juno as a bit of a feisty character, and the friendship she has with a gay man is certainly unconventional given the story’s setting and period. 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. 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.Set in Dublin, Ireland, during the 1980s (though it would be hard to tell just by reading the book alone — I had to crib the years of the setting from the press notes as the book, at least initially, reads as though it could be set during any time during the past 70 odd years), this is a coming-of-age story. Juno loves to read, and she spends much of her time in the library, where Missus H, the librarian, acts as a sort of surrogate mother. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, as I am wary of unintentional spoilers (beware of other reviews that give away a major plot point at the halfway mark! An exquisite, haunting bildungsroman of a novel, “Juno Loves Legs” certainly lives up to the praises of Gabriel Byrne and Douglas Stuart, who wrote the immortal books, Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo. Growing up on the estate is tough for them both, but as they emerge into the possibilities and underground parties of 1980s Dublin, they find a breathing space to begin their real lives.