Juno Loves Legs

Product Information

The raw, lilting poetry of Juno’s voice provides a series of heartbreaking revelations." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post Beautifully written by the Irish author, Karl Geary, with many poignant and alarming situations for such young children to live through and be subjected to…from caustic, horrific neighbors to strict and punishing Catholic religious leaders, which leads to their own overworked and underpaid strict parents (most likely uneducated), who barely sustain a living and survive their forced inertia and poverty.

The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen is incredible. It’s exactly why you’d want to read. It just speaks to you and it’s all in there – life’s messiness, ugliness, beauty. Also, How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney is gorgeous, and Fern Brady’s Strong Female Character is a punch in the gut – I loved it. Geary finds beauty in the most unlikely places, and in an often brutal story, with more than its fair share of small tragedies, he offers balm along the way; a reminder that humanity is everywhere, if we take the time to look, and a clear demonstration that family is less about genetics and more about love." —Joanna Cannon, The GuardianI specifically didn’t want to talk about sexual abuse, because then it becomes a sexual abuse story. And that’s all anyone reads,” he says. “I think there’s an array of other abuses.” 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." — Shelf Awareness A poignant portrait of two people caught in poverty and an intolerant society, this one will break your heart.

I honestly believe people want basic things ... They want to be educated. They want to feel safe — Karl Geary Juno Loves Legs broke my heart. I never wanted it to end' DOUGLAS STUART, bestselling author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo Juno loves Legs. She's loved him since their first encounter at school in Dublin, where she fought the playground bullies for him. He feels brave with her, she feels safe with him, and together they feel invincible, even if the world has other ideas. Karl Geary’s sophomore novel flirts with and then darkly subverts the marriage plot, killing off the nuclear family in an attempt to remake it, with a difference.”—Annabel Barry, Chicago Review of Books For fans of Shuggie Bain and A Little Life, Juno Loves Legs is the epic and heartbreaking story of a young friendship set in working-class Dublin in the 1980s

Advance Praise

If you are in the mood for a novel that will rip your heart out and slap you repeatedly in the face with it, have I got a recommendation for you . . . [A] beautiful tale of survival and how friendship can be a salvation.”—Liberty Hardy, Book Riot Class is a big theme in Juno Loves Legs, and is brought to life through subtle yet significant behaviours, such as the way certain customers of Juno’s mother (a dressmaker) refuse to touch off anything in their house. Juno's combination of vulnerability and hard edges lends her a tender toughness that makes it impossible to turn away. Geary's writing is wonderfully revealing and beautiful, particularly when describing characters' clothing, which is often used to show or hide their emotions. Altogether achingly memorable." — Booklist (starred review) When we think about prose, working-class people are used for comic effect, or as a trope. I really wanted to not do that. If you take the delicate interactions that people have in their lives, you have a chance of revealing people as people, outside of their class. You get a more tactile, almost sensuous sense of a world that’s usually left out.

The book will, I think, have an extra special resonance for Irish people, and Dubliners in particular. The dialogue has a syncopated rhythm to it that I found a little jarring at times but I loved the book so much I just didn’t dwell on it. It’s not that often that you read a story of such pure platonic love - incidentally, my two favourite books so far this year have been just that (this one and We All Want Impossible Things).

Shuggie Bain vibes abound in this tenderhearted tale." —Michelle Hart, An Electric Literature Most Anticipated Book of 2023 Karl Geary is such a beautiful writer. Juno Loves Legs is completely authentic and harrowing and brilliantly observed . . . a heartbreaker, and absolutely unforgettable. Donal Ryan, author of THE QUEEN OF DIRT ISLAND Misfit buddies from unkind worlds who find salvation in each other has been done before in fiction, but Geary elevates the trope with an original central duo. Juno’s pursuit of authenticity, her instinct for it, makes her a clear-eyed, oddly compassionate narrator: “They fade, memories, even good ones, the ones we want. I’d practise my favourites, learned as if by rote. But no matter, you end up with memories of memories: you get tar from coal, not diamonds.” Despite all the deprivation she’s experienced, there is a seer-like, ruthlessly pragmatic streak to Juno that leaves the reader hoping she’ll escape the world she’s known from childhood, to survive. Sarah Gilmartin I left in 1988. I was 16 and I’d been out of school for a while, selling wallpaper. I had a phone number of somebody in New York that I’d spoken to once who ran a bicycle messenger company in the East Village, and they said come on over. What a beautiful book. I've heard it being compared to Shuggie Bain but there's no comparison in my eyes. Where Shuggie only gave us the barest glimpse of sunlight, Juno gives us swathes of it. By the time I finished Shuggie I had a headache and was miserable but with Juno there was so much hope. Sadness, yes but still hope.

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.”— Shelf Awareness Heartbreaking . . . Geary often finds poetry in Juno’s plainspoken narration, whether in lucid reflections on the brutality at the school or in Juno’s openhearted wonder at Dublin . . . The blistering dialogue, too, captures the characters’ hard-won wisdom . . . This is one to savor." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) A tender, wrenching portrait of two young outsiders searching for sanctuary in the bruised hearts of one another . . . defiantly illuminated by the humor and humanity of its unforgettable protagonist. You will ache for Juno Dan Sheehan, author of RESTLESS SOULS Juno Loves Legs is Irish author Karl Geary’s second novel, the follow up to his critically acclaimed, Costa-nominated debut Montpelier Parade. Sexual relationships, wonderful though they are, we understand, but when you take that out of play you get to ask more interesting questions. How do people come together if not physically, how do they stay close, how do they love?I feel a little mean withholding my fifth star for this book. It's a good read and I was utterly bereft by the end of it. Blurbed by Douglas Stuart this shares some "sad childhood" DNA with his novels but Geary has a style all his own. Perhaps less outwardly humorous, he has an eye for what I call "lingering poignant images", lots of lights reflected in puddles and dreamy reflections. It is impossible to deny he has created two fabulous characters in Juno and Legs. I was dyslexic and didn’t read as a child. I came to it late. I’m very aware that I have blind spots but you learn to self-educate, you learn what turns you on. It’s a good way to spend time. After Montpelier Parade, I thought: writing novels is all I want to be doing. How do I structure my life in a way that I can do this? Glasgow is probably one of the few cities that’s affordable in that way. The difference now, however, is that the country has been developed extensively and should be able to accommodate its citizens. “At least when I was leaving the country was all, kind of, in ruins. People now are leaving and ... everything’s glossy, and shiny, and five-star hotels, and Google, and Facebook, and Apple, and people are driving around in expensive cars.” It was pretty savage actually. I was careful not to overplay those cards because it becomes caricature, but in some ways I think I was kind to the establishment. When children are treated in that way, where does that trauma go?