Juno Loves Legs is a sensitive, scarred coming-of-age story by Karl Geary (Montpelier Parade), set in a troubled housing estate and nearby Dublin in the 1980s. Amid poverty, a harsh and judgmental Catholicism, family dysfunction, and personal torment, preteens Juno and Seán form an unlikely but sturdy friendship that will carry them through trauma and violence and--if they're lucky--into a wider, freer life.
Juno's harried mother takes in sewing alterations for the neighbors, who look down on her family's poverty and cheat her out of her meager pay. Her father drinks his days away. Her older sister is absent following her own particularly awful childhood. Catholic school is a trial for a girl as headstrong and underprivileged as Juno. Then she meets Seán, who is shockingly clean but whose home life is equally, if differently, disturbed. For his awkward height she dubs him Legs, and they form an alliance, until an extraordinary act of violence tears everything apart. Years later in Dublin, with new challenges, the young adult versions of these childhood friends attempt a beautiful, possibly doomed, second start.
Juno's first-person voice is angry, indignant, righteous, both jaded and pitifully innocent. She blusters to hide her vulnerability, where Legs leaves his tender side open and allows the blows to land. Juno Loves Legs is tender and heartbreaking. Young friendship takes on all the world's challenges--love, art, family, the simple and overwhelming task of survival--with tragic, poignant results. Readers will find Juno's bravado and Legs's persistent sweetness unforgettable. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia