A Swift Pure Cry (Definitions)

A Swift Pure Cry (Definitions)

by SiobhanDowd (Author)

Synopsis

After Shell's mother dies, her obsessively religious father descends into alcoholic mourning and Shell is left to care for her younger brother and sister. Her only release from the harshness of everyday life comes from her budding spiritual friendship with a naive young priest, and most importantly, her developing relationship with childhood friend, Declan, charming, eloquent and persuasive. But when Declan suddenly leaves Ireland to seek his fortune in America, Shell finds herself pregnant and the centre of a scandal that rocks the small community in which she lives, with repercussions across the whole country. The lives of those immediately around her will never be the same again.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Edition: New e.
Publisher: Definitions (Young Adult)
Published: 04 Jan 2007

ISBN 10: 0099488167
ISBN 13: 9780099488163
Children’s book age: 12+ Years
Book Overview: This is an extraordinary story of one girl's courage in the face of prejudice and hardship within a small community in Ireland.
Prizes: Winner of Branford Boase Award 2007. Shortlisted for Carnegie Medal 2007.

Media Reviews
IT IS NO small feat to write a story so heavy with foreboding and both deliver on the palpable sense of dread and concoct a hopeful yet realistic ending. Dowd achieves this in her beautifully realized account of one girl's
loss of innocence, and her resilient recovery. --Publishers Weekly, Starred
Dowd's elegant, unsentimental prose and her instinctive grasp of the struggles of the human heart [lead] toward a hopeful ending. Don't let your kids keep this book to themselves. --People Magazine
Told through flowing eloquent prose, with strong Joycean influences, this engrossing and haunting tale will not let the reader go. --Kirkus Reviews
Author Bio
Siobhan Dowd lived in Oxford with her husband, Geoff, before tragically dying from cancer in August 2007, aged 47. She was both an extraordinary writer and an extraordinary person. A Swift Pure Cry was Siobhan's first novel and it has won the Branford Boase Award and the Eilis Dillon Award and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and Booktrust Teenage Prize. Her second novel, The London Eye Mystery, won the 2007 NASEN & TES Special Educational Needs Children's Book Award. Siobhan's third astonishing but sadly posthumous book, Bog Child, will be published in February 2008.