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.
The whip-smart exchanges, the bravado, the vulnerability, all are captured perfectly on the page ... Geary writes fractured outsiders not just with skill but with humility. This book does not fetishise poverty ... If the friendship between Juno and Legs is the beating heart of this novel, there is life and hope to be found in the walk-on characters, too ... 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 ... There is always much talk in publishing of 'the difficult second novel' – the immense pressure on a writer to exceed or even just equal the achievement of a big and successful debut. Geary need have no concerns on that matter. Juno Loves Legs, in all its painful beauty, is a more than worthy successor.
For over half of the book, there is a lot of hardship and very little light ... It is not that the many instances of corporal punishment in the book feel fabricated – we know these terrible things happened with alarming regularity – rather that their representation in fiction has been done so often, and to greater effect...that there is a tired feel to the school scenes in Geary’s novel, which lends itself to misery lit ... One bad event bleeds into the next; there is something amiss with the pacing and division of the narrative. There is a lack of specificity with time and place. The first half of the book reads more like Ireland in the 1950s. Meanwhile, the presumably deliberate decision not to ground the action in a particular locale detracts from the story. Nothing happens nowhere, as Elizabeth Bowen wrote ... 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.
...a sensitive, scarred coming-of-age story ... 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.
