Bog Child
Front cover of first edition
|
|
| Author | Siobhan Dowd |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Kamil Vojnar |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's historical novel, mystery |
| Publisher | David Fickling (UK, US) |
|
Publication date
|
9 September 2008 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) |
| Pages | 321 pp (first edition) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 759682319 |
| LC Class | PZ7.D7538 Bog 2008 |
Bog Child is a historical novel by Siobhan Dowd published by David Fickling in September 2008, more than a year after her death. Set during the 1980s in The Troubles of Northern Ireland, it features an 18-year-old boy who must study for exams but experiences "his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for the provisional IRA, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog." In flashback and dream there are elements of the murdered girl's prehistoric or protohistoric life and death.
Dowd and Bog Child were named winners of the annual Carnegie Medal, recognising the year's best children's book published in the U.K.
The novel is set in the 1980s. Fergus McCann and Uncle Tally find a bog body of a small girl near the Ireland-UK border. At the same time, Fergus is studying for his A-levels. He makes friends with Owain, one of the border guards, during one of his morning runs across the border. He opens many conversations with Owain. When he goes back to the site of the bog child, Fergus meets Cora and Felicity O'Brien, a girl his age and her archaeologist mother. Fergus named the bog body "Mel". He goes to Long Kesh prison with his mother to meet his brother, Joe, who has been incarcerated as a prisoner because of his involvement with the Irish Republican Army.
He has joined his friends on a hunger strike. After lifting Mel's body from the site, the excavation team, including Fergus and Cora, find that Mel has a noose around her neck. A flashback shows Mel and her family struggling to meet loan repayments. Fergus was asked by Michael Rafters to ferry packets across the border in an attempt to end his brother's hunger strike. Fergus and Cora share their accidental first kiss but begin dating afterwards. After his final A-level exam, physics, Fergus and his family visit his brother in prison to find him gaunt-looking. He gets drunk and dreams about Mel talking to Rur, her love interest. When he wakes up, Cora informs him that Mel was a dwarf. Fergus allows Cora and her mother to stay over at his place due to an appointment with a professor about Mel.
...
Wikipedia