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For fans of Shuggie Bain and A Little Life, Juno Loves Legs is the epic and heartbreaking story of a young friendship set in working-class Dublin in the 1980s.
Juno Loves Legs is the story of two teens labeled as delinquents. Juno and "Legs" grow up on the same housing estate in Dublin, where spirited, intelligent Juno is ostracized for her poverty and Legs is persecuted for his sexuality; they find safety only in each other.
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. As their defiance reverberates through their lives, the children are further alienated from their surrounding society through acts of bravery and cowardice, both their own and others'. Finding themselves as outsiders, they are feared, coveted and watched, but rarely truly seen.
Told through the eyes of Juno, we see the pair begin to navigate the political and oftentimes confusing adult world with honesty and intuition. A country emerging from a dark Catholicism into the wider world of possibilities. Who is invited into modernity and gentrification and who is left behind?
Caught between the rich depth of her intellect and the harsh reality of her life, we follow Juno as she begins to understand how divergent a life lived and a life thought can be.
Juno Loves Legs shows the frustration of feeling trapped in a life that is not yours and the ability of friendship to lift us out of our experiences and into a truer version of ourselves. It is a novel that reminds us that kindness, bravery, and love appear in places where they are not always expected and in forms not usually recognised, but with a potency that cannot be ignored.
"Heartbreaking... 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... The blistering dialogue, too, captures the characters' hard-won wisdom... This is one to savor." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Juno's combination of vulnerability and hard edges lends her a tender toughness that makes it impossible to turn away. Geary's writing is wonderfully revealing and beautiful, particularly when describing characters' clothing, which is often used to show or hide their emotions. Altogether achingly memorable." —Booklist (starred review)
"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... Poignant... Evocative." —Kirkus Reviews
"The characters are three-dimensional and sympathetic as they struggle to overcome the cruel circumstances of their lives... Atmospheric." —Library Journal
"Shuggie Bain vibes abound in this tenderhearted tale by Karl Geary, whose previous book was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and France's prestigious Prix Femina." —Michelle Hart, Electric Literature
"An unforgettable portrait of two young misfits bound together by hard Dublin childhoods. It's an ode to love, to the salvation of friendship, and to the families we build when our own families fail us. Filled with loss and longing, it is by turns brutal and tender, and in the end, utterly devastating. The characters are so real, so desperate to be loved, that the reader will want to reach through the pages and hold them. The effect is extraordinary. Juno Loves Legs broke my heart. I never wanted it to end." —Douglas Stuart, author of Young Mungo and Shuggie Bain
This information about Juno Loves Legs was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Karl Geary was born in Dublin and moved to New York's East Village at the age of sixteen. His debut novel, Montpelier Parade, was short-listed for numerous awards, including the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Costa First Novel Award, and France's prestigious Prix Femina, and was named an Irish Times Book of the Year. He lives in Glasgow.
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