Bokrecension: Across the Barricades av Joan Lingard

Nedanstående innehåll är skapat av Mimers Brunns besökare. Kommentera arbete

This book takes place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in times of war and danger; buses and houses get blown up, people get beat up or even killed. The conflict is between the catholics of the main part of Ireland, who wants N. Ireland to belong to them, and the Protestant republicans of N. Ireland who don’t want to give away their piece of Ireland.

The main characters are two teenagers; Kevin and Sadie. Sadie is protestant and lives with her family (mother, father, brother) in the protestant part of the city. Kevin on the other hand is catholic and lives in the catholic part with his mother, father and eight brothers and sisters. Many of the catholic families were this big, the protestant said that is was because the pope hade forbidden all birth controls while the catholics claimed that they just loved children.
Both Sadie and Kevin live in very conservative families were the women do all the domestic work.

They have grown up together, but they went separate ways (it’s hard for a catholic to meet a protestant and the other way around) and didn’t see each other for three years. Then one day they met in the street and start to talk. They become friends again and start to meet each other once in a while.

Since Sadie is protestant and Kevin is catholic, theirs families and friends don’t like the idea of them hanging out with each other. Kevin’s catholic “friends” threaten him that something bad will happen if he doesn’t stop meeting Sadie. He ignores their warning and they beat him up in the street. After that Sadie doesn’t them to meet anymore, for Kevin’s own safety. When she’s going to meet Kevin to tell him this, she meets her former school teacher, Mr Blake. They start to talk and she tells him about their situation, and the threats. Mr Blake says that they can meet each other at his house instead, if they want a place were they can be safe.
Both Kevin and Sadie think it’s a good idea and Sadie starts doing domestic work at Mr Blake’s house for payment. They usually hang out at his house every day, helping him with gardening and other stuff. But somehow, someone who doesn’t like them dating, finds out about their “hideout” and that person sneaks in to Mr Blake’s garage at night, loosening the bolts of one of the wheels of his car…

I think the language is easy to understand most times, it can be hard when they start to use Irish phrases or speak slang.

The story of the book is nice but can be kind of dull sometimes. It’s written in a way that invites to go to sleep, with much irrelevant information that just gets annoying to read.

But it’s still worth reading because you get to know a lot of the confli...