A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle is a multigenerational story written for children. This novel deals with the themes of death and dying, ghosts, saying good-bye to loved ones who are in the process of passing on to the afterlife, and four generations of women/girl taking a midnight road trip towards the end of the novel.
A Greyhound of a Girl is my first experience with anything written by Roddy Doyle. I like that this children's novel deals with death and dying in such a way that makes it less scary for children with other elements like ghosts, etc. mixed in to make for interesting reading. But overall, I thought A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle was just an okay read. The over use of the words 'cheeky', 'grand', 'like' and a few other words/phrases became annoying after awhile and detracted from the reading experience in my opinion.
Below is the plot summary for A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle from Amazon:
Mary O’Hara is a sharp and cheeky 12-year-old Dublin schoolgirl who is bravely facing the fact that her beloved Granny is dying. But Granny can’t let go of life, and when a mysterious young woman turns up in Mary’s street with a message for her Granny, Mary gets pulled into an unlikely adventure. The woman is the ghost of Granny’s own mother, who has come to help her daughter say good-bye to her loved ones and guide her safely out of this world. She needs the help of Mary and her mother, Scarlett, who embark on a road trip to the past. Four generations of women travel on a midnight car journey. One of them is dead, one of them is dying, one of them is driving, and one of them is just starting out.
I am giving A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle a rating of 2 stars out of 5 stars.
Until my next post, happy reading!!
I have meant to read this author for a long time. I will some day. I can tell you, from reading quite a bit of Irish fiction, that cheeky and grand are words that crop up in Irish speech probably as often as they did in this book. It is just the way they talk in everyday speaking.
ReplyDeleteI've had Roddy Doyle on my radar for a few years too. I hadn't anticipated that the 1st book I'd read by him would be a children's novel though.
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