A Greyhound of a Girl
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £4.49
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- £4.49
Publisher Description
The best-ever children's novel from the brilliant Roddy Doyle is a funny, sad story about four generations of a family. 12 year old Mary O'Hara's beloved, joke-cracking grandmother is near the end of her life. Letting go is hard - until a mysterious young woman appears at Mary's door. She is the ghost of Granny's long-dead mammy and her mission is to help her dying daughter say goodbye to the ones she loves. But first she needs someone to drive them all to the old family farm for a visit to the past. A GREYHOUND OF A GIRL is a perfectly-pitched, sharp and tender tale of family history, cracking characters, and bonds between mothers and daughters that will entrance readers from 10 to adult.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Doyle revisits the subject of his picture book, Her Mother's Face (2008), with this trim novel about a comforting ghost who helps a family deal with the loss of a loved one. Mary O'Hara, 12, hates her daily trips to the Dublin hospital where her beloved grandmother, Emer, is dying, presumably from old age. Returning from school one day, Mary meets Tansey, who seems vaguely familiar even though she is dressed "like a woman who milked cows and threw hay with a pitchfork." Mary's mother, Scarlett (yes, Doyle has named a character Scarlett O'Hara), figures out that Tansey is the ghost of Emer's mother, who died suddenly of the flu in 1928, when Emer was only three. (Doyle is writing from a personal place: his mother lost her mother at a very early age and grew up with the profound sadness of not being able to remember what she looked like.) Written mostly in dialogue, at which Doyle excels, and populated with a charming foursome of Irish women, this lovely tale is as much about overcoming the fear of death as it is about death itself. Ages 9 up.
