First edition
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Author | Berlie Doherty |
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Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Young adult novel |
Publisher | Methuen |
Publication date
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23 October 1986 |
Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) |
Pages | 128 pp |
ISBN | |
OCLC | 13360671 |
LC Class | PZ7.D6947 Gr 1988 |
Granny Was a Buffer Girl is a realistic young-adult novel by Berlie Doherty, published by Methuen in 1986. It recounts stories of love, loyalty and change in several generations of a Sheffield family from the 1930s to the 1980s, linking them to the changing fortunes of that industrial city. Doherty won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.
The first American edition by Orchard Books in 1988 was Doherty's first book published in the U.S.
The title is somewhat misleading, as Granny Dorothy's story is only a small part of the book, but it sets the focus on family history. A buffer girl was a worker in the Sheffield cutlery industry who used the polishing machinery on steel tableware: a hot and dirty job that required protective clothing. Doherty was inspired by the William Rothenstein painting "Sheffield Buffer Girls", depicting two young women in their work clothes.
In the first chapter the narrator is Jess, an 18-year-old girl who is about to leave home to study in France. Her extended family (her father Mike and mother Josie, her grandfathers Jack and Albert, her grandmother Dorothy, her elder brother John and his girlfriend) gathers for a celebration, partly to say goodbye, partly because it is the birthday of Jess and John's eldest brother Danny, who died 10 years earlier, when she was 8. Jess is troubled by a secret she has been harbouring. As the characters talk, they promise to reveal their own stories and secrets.
The second chapter is set in the 1930s and concerns Jess's maternal grandparents, Bridie and Jack. Bridie comes from a large Catholic family and Jack's parents are deeply religious Protestants. They fall in love and marry secretly, knowing their prejudiced families will oppose their marriage.
The third chapter centres on Dorothy, Jess's father's mother, the "buffer girl" of the title. It introduces Jess's great aunt Louie, Dorothy's elder sister, who gets Dorothy a job at a local buffing shop. At the Cutlers' Ball, 1931, Dorothy dances with the boss's handsome son, but when the next day he fails to recognize her in her grimy work clothes, she gives up her dream of escaping the narrow streets and grudgingly accepts the matter-of-fact proposal of her boy-next-door sweetheart, Albert, a young steelworker.