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INTERMEDIATE FICTION
Giff, Patricia Reilly

A Slip of a Girl

234 pp. | Holiday | August, 2019 | Trade ISBN 978-0-8234-3955-3 $16.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-0-8234-4308-6
(2) 4-6 In late-nineteenth-century Ireland, the Mallon family struggles to stay in their home and farm their land--land now controlled by an English earl determined to evict them by raising rents and taxes. With her dying words, Mam entrusts her eldest daughter, Anna, to care for her sister Nuala ("slow to speak, / slow to understand"), their house, and the land. Helpless, hungry, and angry, Anna throws a rock at the earl's manor house, breaks a window, and is arrested. She escapes, grabs Nuala, and travels for miles to find sanctuary with an aunt. Along the way, they encounter others evicted from their homes and desperate to survive. Through spare, elegant verse, Anna relates her struggles with the English, showing her humiliation ("They drag us down, and push our faces into the mud. / We're trussed up / like spring lambs, / and shoved into their cart") and her resolve ("The soldiers try to march / through us. / They point their bayonets. / But we stand firm"). Giff employs small incidents, such as the carding of wool or Anna's rationing potatoes, to create a substantial setting, while archival photographs sprinkled throughout link these moments to the conditions of the larger community and history. Appended with a glossary and an author's note describing Giff's Irish lineage.
Reviewer: Betty Carter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2020

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