What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that teens smoke, drink, get drunk, make out, and come close to having sex. The story takes place during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and there are bombings and suicidal hunger strikes.

Families can talk about the Troubles. The story assumes knowledge of them, but American teens may need some context (see the Other Choices section for a place to start). What do you know about the Troubles? Why would people starve themselves to death over prison uniforms and accommodations? Why is Fergus so angry when he discovers the truth about the packages he's been carrying?

Fergus lives in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. He's trying to balance his exams, which are his only ticket out; his brother, an imprisoned IRA fighter on a hunger strike; and being pressured into secretly carrying mysterious packages back and forth across the border. Then he and his uncle discover a body buried in a bog, which turns out to be nearly 2000 years old. When archeologists arrive to argue over the find and which country owns it, he finds himself falling for the daughter of one of them, and having strange dreams about the life of the girl whose body they found. Includes brief Author's Note.

This is a lovely book about an unlovely time and place -- a grim Northern Irish town in the early '80s. Fergus and his family are appealing characters living through exceptionally difficult events, and the parallel story of the long-ago life of Mel, the bog child, seen through Fergus' troubled dreams, adds resonance and depth to the story. Especially touching are Fergus' forbidden friendship with a young British border guard, and his family's division and desperation over his brother Joe's hunger strike: "Oh, Joe. The consequences. On you, on us, on all of us. Did you think of them? Did you?"

Basing the story on real events at the Long Kesh prison, the late author, British herself, assumes that her readers know all about the Troubles, and understand the terminology of Provos and Unionists and Sinn Fein. She helps them out with only the briefest of Author's Notes, and no glossary. American teens will need some help with context, either by explaining it to them or pointing them towards researching it for themselves. Without that context the story is still readable, but makes a whole lot less sense.

From the Book
No. It was bigger. A coil of metal, fashioned like a plait, chased itself round.

And as he stared, fingers, four of them, appeared below it. They were brown and lined and tiny. The skin on them was too big for the bones, drooping slightly. They reminded him of his mother's, when she wore the extra-large Marigold rubber gloves.

They were beautiful, poised like a pianist's getting ready to play, but only half the size of his own.

Other Books by Siobhan Dowd:
A Swift Pure Cry
The London Eye Mystery

Parallel Stories in Past and Present:
A Bone from a Dry Sea

by Peter Dickinson
Shadow of a Hero by Peter Dickinson
Canyons by Gary Paulsen
Holes by Louis Sachar
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
Postcards from No Man's Land by Aidan Chambers
Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton
Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey

Related Web sites:
Author's Memorial Site
Obituary
BBC History of the Troubles

Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.