Synopsis: One inch from the wall of brown turf, he froze. "There's something here. In the earth. A hand." Digging for peat in the mountain with his Uncle Tally, Fergus find something that makes his heart stop. Curled up deep in the bog is the body of a child. And it looks as if she's been murdered. As Fergus tries to make sense of the mad world around him - his brother on hunger-strike in prison, his growing feelings for Cora, his ma and da arguing over the Troubles, and him in it up to the neck - a little voice comes to him in his dreams, and the mystery of the bog child unfurls.

Set in Ireland in the 1980's, Bog Child is an extraordinary novel that explores the sacrifices made in the name of peace and the unflinching strength of the human spirit.

Review: Found on the border between the Northern Ireland and the South, the bog child and her story intrigue Fergus in a way that creeps into his every waking – and sleeping – moment. After the initial panic of the discovery of the body, it seems that Mel, as Fergus christens her, is, in fact, thousands of years old, perfectly preserved through time by the protection of the peat bogs. The narrative of both Mel and Fergus runs concurrently, Mel’s story being told through Fergus’s dreams, though the main protagonist is Fergus. The huge differences in their lives makes for an odd contrast, yet both are fascinating in their own way. Fergus’s life seems to be happening around him with nothing he can do to assist or prevent it - military presences, terrorist threats and his own brother part of the Maze Prison hunger-strikers. Mel, by contrast, has a destiny, though she too has had nothing to do with the choosing of her circumstances.

While an interesting book on more than one historical perspective, I felt perhaps students with no link to, or experience of, the ongoing Northern Ireland issues might find it a difficult story to relate to. As mentioned previously, the concurrent lives of an 80’s Irish boy and an Iron Age girl is an unlikely pairing, yet adds an original spin to what I imagine is a chillingly realistic account of 1980’s Ireland.

Nicolette Jones in The Sunday Times