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.
from Juno Loves Legs by Karl Geary
Two Dublin teens act out against their peers and the priest who runs their Catholic school. Juno is fierce, brash, her mother struggling to keep the family afloat, her father distant and drunk; “They were two mouths and I was their ear,” she tells us. Her only friend and ally is ‘Legs,’ a loner ostracized by the Sister for his beauty and verbally abused by the Father for his sexual orientation. The pair form an allegiance and take care of each other, and love each other.
The Catholic church rules their world, constantly reminding the children of their sinfulness and the church’s authority given by God. Juno and Leg have no haven in their homes. The world is seemingly against them. All they have is each other.
Legs is a talented artist. Juno loves to watch her mother sew and repair garments, longing to be allowed to use the Singer sewing machine. She spends hours at the local library, the librarian suggesting books to read. There is another world that Juno can’t even imagine. Where young women go to college and find careers.
Tragic events separate the pair, but when they reunite, Legs protects and cares for the only person who ever loved him, even while Juno must learn the limits of their relationship and how to let go.
“He was never really my fella, he was something else, something more,” Juno thinks. Their love is more beautiful than any romance.
A poignant portrait of two people caught in poverty and an intolerant society, this one will break your heart.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through Edelweiss. My review is fair and unbiased.
Juno Loves Legs
by Karl Geary
Catapult
Pub Date April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781646221134
from the publisher
Juno Loves Legs is the story of two teens labeled as delinquents. Juno and “Legs” grow up on the same housing estate in Dublin, where spirited, intelligent Juno is ostracized for her poverty and Legs is persecuted for his sexuality; they find safety only in each other.
Set against the backdrop of Dublin in the 1980s, a place of political, social and religious change, the friends yearn for an unbound life and together they begin to fight to take up the space of who they truly are. As their defiance reverberates through their lives, the children are further alienated from their surrounding society through acts of bravery and cowardice, both their own and others’. Finding themselves as outsiders, they are feared, coveted and watched, but rarely truly seen.
Told through the eyes of Juno, we see the pair begin to navigate the political and oftentimes confusing adult world with honesty and intuition. A country emerging from a dark Catholicism into the wider world of possibilities. Who is invited into modernity and gentrification and who is left behind?
Caught between the rich depth of her intellect and the harsh reality of her life, we follow Juno as she begins to understand how divergent a life lived and a life thought can be.
Juno Loves Legs shows the frustration of feeling trapped in a life that is not yours and the ability of friendship to lift us out of our experiences and into a truer version of ourselves. It is a novel that reminds us that kindness, bravery, and love appear in places where they are not always expected and in forms not usually recognised, but with a potency that cannot be ignored.
The Literate Quilter 