The Gilmore Guide to Books

Connecting Books and Readers One Review at a Time

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Reviews
    • Reviews by Author
    • Reviews by Title
    • Reviews by Genre
  • Podcast
  • Policies
    • Review Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Privacy Policy

Juno Loves Legs

July 26, 2023

juno

Juno Loves Legs by Karl Geary
Published by Catapult
Publication date: April 18, 2023
Genres: Book Clubs, Fiction, Coming-of-age, Cultural, Literary, Social Issues
four-half-stars
Amazon

With a personality as incendiary and out of control as her flaming red hair, Juno bursts onto the pages of Juno Loves Legs like a wildfire. She and Legs, her best friend, live in a housing estate in Dublin and in an abbreviated 300 pages the novel follows them from childhoods where even home isn’t safe to an adulthood that comes far too fast and too hard. And yet, through it all, Juno burns bright.

It’s the 1980s and Juno lives with her parents, goes to Catholic school, and is reviled and feared for her poverty and her temper. Legs is similarly outcast, but for different reasons. Too quiet to fight back and too pretty to be ignored he’s the target of both classmates and their teacher, Sister. After a confrontation with Sister and Father, the headmaster, over confirmation names—Legs having chosen Judas and Juno Mary Magdalene—the two band together, embracing their outsider status. Until a series of events pulls them apart, scrubbing them from their old lives. Six years later, Legs finds Juno and once again they provide each other with the hope and love they’ve not had from anyone else in their lives.

There are no massive plot twists hidden in Juno Loves Legs. It’s not the landscape author Karl Geary paints that took my breath away, but the brushstrokes. He wields words with a precision and honesty that reveals the intimacy found only in the rarest of friendships—that which sees the deepest other and doesn’t turn away.

Legs took a breath. I could see how he steeled himself not to be cross with me, not to fight the way some part of me knew only how to fight.

This tenderness is offset by a transgressive Irish humor delivered with the sarcasm and flippancy that often mask insecurity and fear. The combination of the two made these characters I wanted to sit with, listen to, help. It’s a wonder, reading prose like this. Not elegant or overwrought, but vibrating with life and the truth of life. Juno Loves Legs may be a somewhat familiar story, but it struck at the heart of me.

They were beautiful, beautiful children and I thought, surely we were beautiful children too – why didn’t anyone say? We should have been told of it, our beauty.

For more fiction about vibrant young girls who leap off the page, try Donal Ryan’s The Queen of Dirt Island or Miriam Toewes Fight Night.

 

 This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I get a small commission (at no cost to you).

 

four-half-stars

Related Posts

  • Related Posts
  • Same Genre
  • 4.5 Star Books
All Things Cease to Appear
glass hotel
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
dearly
The Dearly Beloved
eight
Eight Books I Can’t Wait to Read This Fall
prayer
A Prayer for Travelers
ruby
Ruby: A Novel
book of two
The Book of Two Ways
Rutherford Park
Rutherford Park
cloisters
The Cloisters: A Novel
feast
Feast of Sorrow: A Novel of Ancient Rome
unsettled ground
Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller
ten
Necessary People: A Novel
lincoln
Lincoln in the Bardo
invisible
The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness
fortunate
The Fortunate Ones: A Novel

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1980s, Ireland, literary

Comments

  1. susan says

    July 30, 2023 at 2:44 pm

    Yeah I probably need to read this. I did like Donal Ryan’s novel. And there’s rarely an Irish author I don’t like these days. Some of the recent books from there are superb.

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      August 3, 2023 at 1:38 pm

      I am having a phenomenal year with Irish authors! I’ve yet to read anything I didn’t love.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Bloglovin
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Save time and subscribe via email

No time to keep checking for new reviews? Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No spam!

Currently Reading

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
by Emily Nagoski
The Dutch House
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

goodreads.com

Affiliate Disclosure

I’m an affiliate for Indiebound and Amazon. If you click on a link that takes you to any of these sites and make a purchase I’ll earn a small fee, which goes towards the costs of maintaining this site. Your support is appreciated. Thank you!

Archives

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Theme Design By Studio Mommy · Copyright © 2023

Copyright © 2023 · Beyond Madison Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in