Give Them Stones

by Mary Beckett (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1988

  $3.36

  Until the day they shot a boy in both legs up against Matha's wall, she had never been one for taking risks in that precarious corner of Belfast. But she couldn't agree with the Provos taking the law into their own hands. Ever since being a school child, she had despised bullying. Her own was a gentle rearing, if a materially poor one. Over sixty years of dramatic events in Belfast are viewed in this novel through the eyes of a perfectly ordinary woman who was exposed to war, murder, bombings and curfews. Give Them Stones was the winner of the Sunday Tribune Arts Award for Literature (1987). Mary Beckett is also the author of A Woman of Belfast .

• Used

  Hardcover
  1987

  $3.36

  This story by Mary Beckett, born in Belfast, covers over 60 years of dramatic events in her home town. It is viewed through the eyes of an ordinary woman called Martha. She is witness to the Troubles in 1935, leaves school at the age of fourteen to go to work in the local mill, is evacuated to elderly aunts in the country during the blitz and sees her father interned in wartime for once allegedly belonging to the IRA. These events lead her to develop a strong urge to determine her own fate. The events leading up to her marriage are described and how she knew she would marry Dermot Hughes as soon as she saw his gas cooker. Her passion for baking becomes more than just a means of gaining a little financial independence but a therapy in times of crisis. From her tiny bakery an insider's perspective of the city's plight is gained: the rising struggles for civil rights, the Falls Road curfew of 1970, the bombings, the sectarian murders, the fear for sons with no jobs and no street safe for them to walk on between the soldiers arresting and IRA recruiting. It is very much a story of personal battles and victories and how they are fought and won. By same author: A Woman of Belfast .