A Greyhound of a Girl

Doyle's newest is a book for children, but it isn't really. It has a certain overtone of nostalgia that appeals to adults, as well as four generations of characters, each of whom represents a key moment of human life and a key family role; these things make it suit an adult looking back perhaps

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more than a child looking forward. But you mustn't think that this is a flaw. The whole book is soaked in emotional and familial bonds -- it is more intense, less silly, and less interested in presenting the minutia of childhood than most recent books for/about children -- but there is nothing flawed in that. It's just a different sort of creature.

I'm doing a terrible job explaining the difference, but I assure you, the book is lovely. It celebrates life, generations, women, family, death -- all these wonderful realities and ideas -- but it does so swiftly. You know what the end will be almost from the start, so it isn't about plot at all, but it's compelling anyway. The voices of the characters -- each bearing a distinct pattern from a distinct moment -- echo in the mind, creating a sense of conversation that is as aural as it is verbal ("hearing" those voices was, for me, the best part of the book). In the end, it creates a sense of comfort as well as a sense of loss. It's not an ordinary sort of book. It's the sort of book that you read with your daughter when her grandmother is dying. And I know that doesn't really sound like a recommendation, but it is. This a sad book, a reflective book... but also a wonderful book. I think I'll be returning to it again someday.

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Mary's grandmother is dying in the hospital when a strange, faded older woman approaches Mary with a message.

This is a lovely little story about death and family, about four generations of Irish women and the ties that bind them together through the years. It's hard to classify -- it's sort of like

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a children's book, in that it is brief and one of the main characters is a child (and a few of the memories we see from the others are from a child's perspective), but I don't think children are the ones who would most enjoy this story. I would, however, definitely recommend it to adults, and to the introspective, thoughtful child who doesn't mind a story without a lot of plot.

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I've read and enjoyed Roddy Doyle's adult books and his hilarious The Giggler Treatment for children so when I saw this middle grade reader, I was excited to read it. Doyle writes with warmth and humor in each different kind of book he writes and this quirky novel is no exception.

Mary is 12 years

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old, a quintessential Irish schoolgirl whose much loved granny is in hospital dying and whose best friend has moved away from the neighborhood. When a strange but kind woman who seems to know Mary's granny Emer speaks to her, she just assumes the woman is a new neighbor. Mary's mother Scarlett who speaks in exclamations, except when she is sad and focused on Emer's illness, assumes the same thing at first. Eventually though, both Mary and her mother realize that the woman is in fact a ghost, the ghost of granny's mother Tansey who died when her daughter was just a small thing who has appeared now to help ease Emer's own way into death.

Mary and Scarlett learn much about Tansey and the past as they try to figure out how to help Emer and Tansey come together (ghosts get too dim and disappear in too much light like those in a hospital) and how to give Granny/Emer the comfort she needs in her final days. Taking her out of the hospital and on a journey to the places of her childhood, they all learn the importance of memory and love and contentment. The four generations, all at four very different stages of life and death, strengthen their loving bond with each other and learn acceptance of the inevitable, demystifying and removing any lingering fear of death.

Although Tansey is a ghost, this is definitely not a scary tale and it really isn't a ghost story either. It's a simple, sweet, affecting novel about family and, in the end, accepting, even welcoming, the death of a dearly loved one. The characters are grand and lovely, caring, and careful with each other. Mary is a cheeky and entertaining preteen, bound to her mother but also realistically exasperated by her at times. Written mostly in dialogue, the novel moves along at a quick pace. Despite its speed, it is really a quiet book without much plot driving it; its characters are its all. The writing is well done and the characters are Doyle's own brand of just slightly eccentric but there's still a slightly unfinished feel to the tale as a whole. What is there is charming but it still leaves the reader slightly unsatisfied in the end.

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The four generations of women are 12-year-old Mary O'Hara, her mother, Scarlett, her grandmother, Emer, who lies dying in hospital, and her great-grandmother, Tansey, who is already dead and is a friendly ghost.

Tansey, who died when Emer was a small child, wants to pass on a message to Emer, which

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is " It'll be grand!" and " there's nothing to be worried or frightened of" as she hovers in the air and then one evening meets Mary O'Hara, and asks for her help and Scarlett's.

Almost at the end of the book, the four women take a night-long road trip from Dublin to Wexford to see the house in which Tansey and Emer used to live and then they went to the seaside where they got icecream cones. After this night- long trip, Emer dies at the Sacred Heart Hospital the next day.

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This short novel by the fine Irish writer Roddy Doyle is written for teens, but I thoroughly enjoyed it on an adult level too…

Mary O’Hara is twelve. She’s feisty and rather cheeky – but then her Mum Scarlett was too when she was younger; it’s a family trait. Mary’s gran, Emer used to be

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like that too, but she’s nearing the end of her life in hospital, it won’t be long. Emer never really knew her mother, for Tansey died of the flu when she was only three.

One day as Mary is walking home from school, she meets a friendly old lady, who somehow seems familiar. They strike up a conversation, and the old lady is there again the next day. She says her name is Tansey. When Mary tells her Mum this, she’s shocked to the bone as the only Tansey she knows is her dead grandmother. Mary introduces them, and finds out that Tansey is the ghost of her late great-grandmother who has come to help her gran in her last days. Together the O’Hara women hatch a plan to help Tansey and Emer meet properly before she dies, and to see what has become of the farm they grew up in.

Considering that death is one of the central themes of this novel, whether it be the impending demise of Emer, the sudden illness of Tansey, or the animals on the farm, there’s nothing shocking or unnatural about it at all, it’s part of the cycle of life. This allows the book to concentrate almost exclusively on the four women. The few male characters just pass through now and then, rarely stopping to join in the tale, like Mary’s teenaged brothers who only appear to eat; Mary finds Dommo and Killer, as Dominic and Kevin now monnicker themselves to be an alien species these days.

Doyle alternates voices between conventional story-telling and chapters narrated by one of the four women, starting with Mary. You can see their family resemblances clearly – not just in the way they look – for the O’Hara women are tall and slim like the greyhounds they kept on the farm, but also their inner strength, and cheeky forthright manners. This allows for some typically humorous conversations between them, which gives a lovely bittersweet edge to this tale; not out and out funny like Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy (in which The Van just cracked me up), but it will make you smile, and that’s a good thing for a book about dying written for teenagers to do.

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A Greyhound of a Girl is the story of four generations of women who have united to ease the death of one of them, Emir. The other three are her daughter, Scarlett, Scarlett's daughter, Mary, and Tansy, Emir's own mother who died young and has returned to let her know that death is nothing to fear.

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In fact, Tansy says, "It's grand!". These four women embark on a road trip so that Emir can get one last glimpse of the home she grew up in and, on the way, they develop bonds that will ultimately transcend the loss of death. Author Roddy Doyle's description of this trip is one of the most marvelous sentences I have read in a very long time - 'One is dead, one is dying, one is driving, and one is just starting out'.

Doyle reverses that old cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words: he weaves beautiful vivid images with a modicum of words, never a word too many and never one out of place, yet together they create a lyricism that sings off the page, that sparkles with colour and music and demands to be read out loud.

This book is, on the surface, a ghost story. But it is so much more than that. It is a celebration of family, of women, of lives lived and death eased. But this is also no 'Circle of Life' Disney tale; it is sweet without being saccharine; humorous without being dark; touching without being melodramatic. In fact, A Greyhound of a Girl is the most joyful book about death and dying I have ever read. At the end, although I was moved by Emir's story, I wasn't sad; instead, I found myself smiling as her family gave her the gift of seeing her life one last time.

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I've been reading a lot of stinkers lately, so when I got the chance to read this book (the title and cover automatically grabbing me), I jumped on it. The first thing you'll notice is how engaging both the dialogue and the dialect of the characters is; I loved words like "eegit" and how the

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mother, Scarlett, always ended her sentences with an exclamation. And then there's Mary, the main character, who, of course, is just becoming a teenager and uses a certain word until it's worn out...you'll see. Either way, it's humorous and the way they talk grows on you after a while.

I also found virtually no grammatical errors, which I love to see! It makes me more secure when I read a book to trust the author when he/she uses grammar correctly, if that makes sense. I also thought the "chapter markers," or whatever they are called, were beautiful illustrations and added to the beauty of the story in a way you could actually see. I think my favorite thing about this book was not only the humor in it, but the suspense at the end, and how touching it was. I don't cry with many stories, and although I still didn't cry with this one, the story made me yearn to see my grandmother, which the thought of did make me start to tear up.

There were a few quotes I highlighted that I really enjoyed, especially one that proves my theory that all ages are meant to enjoy it. I will wait until the book is actually released, however, before I spout out what the author might decide at the last minute to remove.

Even though the story is aimed at children and YA, and even though one of my favorite characters from the story just so happened to be a ghost, I truly believe this is a book that all ages will enjoy. Like the four generations of women who came together in the story, different generations can come together to read this book.

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“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.” 12-year-old Dublin schoolgirl Mary O’Hara's beloved Granny, Emer, is dying, but can't seem to let go of life. Enter Tansey,

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the ghost Granny’s mother, who died of influenza with Emer was just three years old. She has come to help her daughter say goodbye to those she loves and move on with her journey. One night Emer, Tansey, Mary, and her mother, Scarlett, head off on a midnight road trip into the past.

I love the connection between the characters and the interesting way they interact with each other. This is a very sweet and loving story with many humorous moments. Doyle has told the woman's story with wit and style. Very enjoyable.

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This is marvelous! I read that Doyle is known for his excellent dialogue and that is so true in this story of four generations of women. Set in modern day Ireland, flashbacks to the past reveal Great-Grandmother's Grandmother's, and Mom's lives to the daughter. I love the dialects and Irish lilt

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and expressions. This would be a wonderful book to read for a mother-daughter book club, or for any book club. The humor between the four women is a blessing and joy. Even though the grandmother is dying, and it is sad, it is not a sad story. This is one to read again! Includes a map of Ireland and an inlay of the particlar environs of the story on the endpapers.

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Mary O'Hara is finding out that at 12 years, life doesn't go the way it should. Her best friend has moved away to another part of Dublin, her mother ends every sentence with an exclamation point, her beloved granny is ill and she's met a strange woman who seems to know who she is.

In the hands of

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Booker winner Roddy Doyle, Mary is about to undertake a journey of wonder, wrapped up in love. Because that strange woman, Tansy, is the great-grandmother that she never met, that her mother never met and who her granny lost when she was much younger than Mary is now.

Doyle breaks the book up into separate stories about their different lives. They're all quite different and show the different ways women were expected to help their families in their own eras. But the stories also show how strong women who love their families can do that and remain themselves as well.

The final sections of the book depict a fanciful way that they can discover each other's strengths and loves in a way that perhaps could only happen in Ireland. It's a wild ride of a finish that is sweet without being maudlin. Best of all, Doyle shows a way that generations can remember and honor those they loved, and who loved them. This way shows how the novel got its title.

Although marketed as a children's novel, this is a grand little story that would be a delight to any woman who cares about the women who helped make her who she is, and who likes the idea of carrying on a legacy of love.

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Roddy Doyle is a treasure of a writer and storyteller. No matter which book of his I read I find myself falling in love with his voice and the people he writes about.

A Greyhound of a Girl is, in theory, a young adult book (I also think it would be suitable for middle grade readers), yet every bit

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of it astonished and delighted me. I can't imagine who wouldn't enjoy this tale of four generations of women - one dead, one dying, one a mother, one a daughter - who meet when the dead one comes back as a voice to tell stories, finish business, and be there for her dying daughter as she could not be when her daughter was living.

A beautiful and charming picture into generations of women and how they crisscross and affect each other. It reminded me very much of both of my grandmothers and of the time when my great grandmother, June, was alive and taking care of me. A line of strong and unique women that I look back to when I need to remember important things. Highly recommended.

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Atmospherically Irish. Mary meets the ghost of her great-granny, who has returned to be with her own daughter, Mary's grandmother, before she dies.

I enjoyed this novel much more than I thought I would. A warm, touching supernatural story.

I've enjoyed reading everything that Roddy Doyle has written. This was definitely an enjoyable read about a young girl who meets the ghost of her great grandmother while her grandmother is dying in the hospital. A perfect Irish storyteller.

While I thought the author's book Paddy ha, ha, ha was depressing, this was just the opposite.

Suspend logic for a few hours and travel with twelve year old Mary who loses her best friend and then finds her great grandmother -- in ghost form.

Close to her grandmother, she and her mother visit her in

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the hospital frequently. As her aging grandmother is fading, she is very afraid of dying.

Mary's great grandmother appears to Mary wanting her to give a message to her daughter (Mary's grandmother). To assuage the fear of dying, she wants Mary to pass along the message "that all will be grand."

When four generations -- Mary, her mother, her grandmother, and her great grandmother come together, the power of love shines through.

Sentimental, but not sappy. Touching, but not dramatic. I liked this book.

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3.5 stars

I was very interested in reading this one! I've never read a Roddy Doyle book before but since I live in Ireland, I've obviously heard about him a lot. I know he's renowned for being humorous and that certainly came across in this book! It's a short middle-grade book about a young Dublin

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girl named Mary, her mom, her grandmother and her great-granny. Mary's granny is dying- and terrified.

I really enjoyed parts of this book. I thought it started off brilliantly and I was flying through it as I didn't want to put it down! Mary's so sweet and amusing; I was completely captivated. She was such a fun and witty young character and I really enjoyed the parts of the book that involved her. I thought she had an interesting take on the world around her and it was interesting (and sad) to watch her try to navigate her way through her recent troubles. She was definitely a cheeky kid but also very kind-hearted and loving.

Mary's mother was also hilarious! She acted like a child herself a lot of the time. I thought her grandmother and great-grandmother were good too but honestly didn't really enjoyed the sections that were dedicated to them. I just found them a bit dull and they didn't capture my attention like the bits about Mary! I would have loved the book if it had followed Mary more. I understand why the other sections were in there but I couldn't bring myself to like them. On the other other hand, other reviewers preferred the sections that weren't about Mary so clearly it's very subjective!

A Greyhound of a Girl is a lovely tale about mothers and the effect they have on our lives even when they're long gone. It's a sweet tale but was acking that extra something to make it great.

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This book was slow for me and hard to connect with. There were elements that I enjoyed, like four generations of women coming together to remember the past and heal. I thoroughly enjoyed Tansey. She was a hoot as well as Emer. The reader realizes that all four women have the same snippety

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personality. The one thing that irked me throughout the book was Mary always saying, "I'm not being cheeky." It felt overused and it got annoying fast. All in all it was a decent book with a sweet story. It was "grand".

I'd like to thank Netgalley and Amulet Books for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

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A master storyteller and writer and a wonderful matter-of-factness about the appearance of a ghost in a young girl's life as her granny lies dying. Really almost a five-star book except the dialogue didn't always ring true for me.

Sweet, sad and refreshingly simple story about a girl who meets the ghost of her great grandmother. We hear the voices and stories of 4 generations of Irish women. Lovely, nostalgic, quick read.

This is a jem of a book by a wordsmith: a gentle, although dark-humorous, treatment of a serious subject.

The characters are clearly drawn, with my favourite being Tansy; she is both kind and direct. The setting could be anywhere at any recent time, but being Ireland makes it clear that family

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values and a wry sense of humour are to be taken as givens.

The pace is a little slow, but seems appropriate for the theme; readers need time to understand the inter-generational relationships.

I would recommend this book to any reader, as we all come from families, but I'd give a gentle warning that you might need to keep a few tissues handy towards the end.

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Disappointing, this book was repetitive and drawn out. The storyline was predictable right from the start and i found that because it was so repetitive (rather than introduce new twists) it soon became boring. Mary (12 years old)meets the ghost of her great grandmother Tansey. Tansey wishes to talk

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to her daughter Emer who was only a 4 year old when Tansey died of the flu. Emer is now aged and nearing her death and cannot remember much about her mother, only that she went to feed the greyhounds and when she came inside she felt ill and later on died.
Tansey's ghost has returned to help her dying daughter say goodbye to the ones she loves. But first she needs to take them all on a road trip to the past.
After reading this book i kept thinking i must have missed something as this book was shortlisted for a 2012 Book of the Year Award. Maybe it was ther difference in generational thinking, while i enjoyed the spirit and cheekiness of Tansey, the great grandmother, i soon became annoyed with the youngest member Mary. I found her attitude annoying as she constantly aimed to justify herself throughout by saying "I'm not being cheeky". If the author intended to illustrate the difference in generational personalities then she achieved this albeit overdone. Hopefully other readers will enjoy it more than i.

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Mary O’Hara, a twelve-year old whose grandmother is dying, meets a ghost in Dublin, Ireland in the current time and about a hundred years after Mara’s great-grandmother had passed away.The ghost appears in order to help Mara’s grandmother through the transition from this life to the

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after-life by providing assurance/easing the dying woman’s fears. This is a YA book that will most likely appeal more to girls in the 8-12 age group: It’s deals with four generations of women and the legacy of eternal, maternal love. A Greyhound of a Girl doesn’t have the humor or zing that The Barrytown Trilogy books do; but Roddy Doyle is still amazing with his ability to create scenes and mood with a deft artistry that also allows the reader’s imagination to go to work.

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Wow, what incredible writing. No frills, wonderfully tight, and deceptively insightful.

"The place frightened her. Even the name, Scared Heart Hospital, scared her a bit. The Scared Heart, people called it. She's in the Sacred Heart. Mary imagined a huge bloody heart with a squelchy door that you

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have to squeeze through, and blood dripping from the ceiling. She knew it was silly. The hospital was a gray building that didn't drip blood at all, although water leaked in one of the corridors."

Best description of a hospital ever. Quick read about four generations of women, family bonds and the ultimate struggling of preparing for death. Excellent stuff.

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Rather disappointing--too often too sweet.