Reviews of A Swift Pure Cry

From The Chicago Tribune (U.S.A), August 2, 2007

Love and loveliness infuse tale of Irish family

Siobhan Dowd's debut novel... is surprising in a few ways. For one, this elegant, literary novel hooked me with its fine writing, but it also held me with a suspenseful story that I never saw coming... It's something of a surprise to find this story, which could have taken place 100 years ago or yesterday, in the young adults pile, because the best-known novels in the genre are characterized by a trendiness more fashion magazine than fiction. Instead of timeliness we get loveliness, not just in the descriptions of natural beauty but in the writing... Dowd's language is clean and poetic, descriptive, and gently witty; she lets her characters make the more mordant observations. -- Katie Haegele

From Shelf Awareness (U.S.A.), April 2007

Few writers can escape the influence of James Joyce--perhaps no Irish writer can. Dowd, an Irish author making her debut, uses his tools in her own unique style in a novel that sophisticated teens and Joyce aficionados alike will not want to miss. Set in 1984, her book begins with a quotation from the Sirens episode of Ulysses, referring to the phrase "swift pure cry" that Leopold Bloom uses to describe a perfect note sung by a sensuous woman ("It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, sustained"). For 15-year-old Michelle Talent, heroine of Dowd's story, the phrase refers to her mother's voice, dead just a year, whom she sorely misses ("A sudden heart-catching climax, the swift pure cry, her mam's singing along, soaring to the high note, peeling the spuds, hand-washing the woolens, turning to smile at Shell as she wiped her hands"). Other townsfolk compare Shell's beauty with her mother's, a comeliness that attracts the attentions of Declan Ronan. His family is wealthy; her family survives on the money Shell's alcoholic father skims from the church collections. The author weaves in themes familiar to Joyce fans: poverty versus wealth, the imposing presence of the Catholic Church, and sexuality--both budding and overblown. She also uses to great effect his device of repeated lyrical phrases to conjure a memory or to demonstrate the heroine's newfound sense of understanding as she navigates her world, like Bloom, largely alone. Declan comes between Shell and her only friend, whom Shell discovers too late has also caught his attentions (" Hickory dickory/ Bridie Quinn/ Ring the bell/ And let yourself in," he tells Shell). She discovers many things too late, and finds herself pregnant in a small rural town where rumors fly and choices are nil. But Dowd also conveys the ties between Shell and her younger siblings, and the kindness of a few neighbors; in each of them the author reveals some evidence of humanity. Readers know who the father of Shell's child is, but in a scene both climactic and cathartic, the heroine informs her father of the truth, and once again hears her mother's "swift, pure cry." Peace has come to Shell at last. Though nearly 80 years have passed from Joyce's Bloomsday (1904) to Shell's coming of age, Dowd suggests that not much had changed in Ireland . Its unforgiving beauty and hard-won independence lives on in the character of Shell and in Dowd's delicious prose.--Jennifer M. Brown

Set in small-town Ireland in 1984, Siobhan Dowd's debut novel helps explain why so many adults read books ostensibly written for teenagers. Dowd's heroine is Shell Talent, who at the age of 15 has already experienced the death of her mother and suffered through her father's alcoholism and religious fanaticism. With two younger siblings to raise and no money, Shell deals with betrayal and pregnancy, followed by accusations of murder and incest in a vicious local witch hunt. And yet Dowd's elegant, unsentimental prose and her instinctive grasp of the struggles of the human heart guide Shell toward a hopeful ending. Don't let your kids keep this book to themselves. -- Meg Rosoff

Dowd's empathy for her characters extends even to Shell's father, a man with "a black shriveled walnut for a heart." It is no small feat to write a story so heavy with foreboding and both deliver on the palpable sense of dread and concoct a hopeful yet realistic ending. Dowd achieves this in her beautifully realized account of one girl's loss of innocence, and her resilient recovery.

Shell's voice is palpably heartbreaking and honest; and her situation evokes immediate pathos from the reader. Set in the mid-1980s in Ireland, Dowd successfully characterizes Ireland as an integral part of the story. Told through flowing eloquent prose, with strong Joycean influences, this engrossing and haunting tale will not let the reader go.

This story kept me reading into the small hours... This sad tale, redeemed by Shell’s good nature and lack of bitterness, suddenly turns into a mystery when a bizarre coincidence sparks bitter accusations, guilt and gossip. The characters are beautifully drawn and the suspense is nail-biting. Based on a true story and shortlisted for two prizes, this marvellous book is wholly engrossing. (Five stars) -- Charlotte Norman

('Children's Book of the Week'): Although this story is about teenage pregnancy — and a scandal about dead babies that is based on a real newspaper report — it is also a celebration of innocence in which the pious and proper are guilty of neglect and lack of compassion, and in which those who are perceived as social transgressors are guileless and loving. Written with a fluent, lyrical sprightliness, this poignant novel invests tragic events with humanity and even, in places, humour. -- NJ

Set in Co Cork in the Eighties, [A Swift Pure Cry] is loosely based on some of the well-known scandals that surrounded the deaths of babies born to single mothers in that period.

Its teenage heroine, Shell, is beautifully and freshly characterised, the beginnings of sexual attraction are depicted in a convincing way, as is endemic rural poverty. Graphic sexual description is avoided, and this tightly-plotted book offers more hope than the historical cases on which it is based. -- Celia Keenan

From an unnamed teenager participating in a reading project in Norfolk libraries, November 2006:

Shell’s Mam has recently died so Shell lives at home with her drunken father, younger brother and sister. Everything seems to change for her when the new priest, Father Rose comes to town. I really enjoyed this book, I felt all the emotions Shell was going through, and when she doubted herself I doubted her too. The plot was very interesting; you were not sure what was going to happen further in the book, unlike some books where it is easy to guess. This book was written really openly, like the author really was Shell. All the characters were well developed and believable especially Shell. This was my favourite. 5/5

Once you start to read it is nearly impossible to stop. "A Swift Pure Cry" reads like a thriller but it is also a book that involves heart and brain, a book which stays with you, one that I want to caress. I have a bookshelf where I keep my "catastrophe books". These are not books about catastrophes but books that have to be rescued in a fire or other tragedies because I can not imagine my life without them. That's where this book found its place, among the best and most special. -- Sabine Dillner

There's little delicate about A Swift Pure Cry, Siobhan Dowd's heartbreaking story of the gradual but inexorable implosion of the life of teenager Shell Talent after she becomes pregnant. The judges [of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize] applauded the cool voice in which Dowd describes Shell's innocence and ignorance, which is both sympathetic and unhysterical.

The average young adult novel doesn't start with an epigraph from Joyce's Ulysses... the average young adult novel wouldn't live up to the high standard it thus sets itself. but A Swift Pure Cry is not your average young adult novel, which should come as no surprise, given that it's published by David Fickling Books, responsible for bringing to the world the justly acclaimed Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime... Siobhan Dowd's debut novel, itself reminiscent of a swift pure cry and as brave as its heroine, takes us someplace else, someplace desperately sad but never hopeless, ultimately redemptive... We share all of Shell's experience, so poignantly rendered -- her grief, her love, her loyatly -- and are enriched by doing so. -- Lorien Kaye.

'God and the bottle: Jamila Gavin finds much to admire in Siobhan Dowd's story of sexual awakening, redemption and hope in 1980s Ireland, A Swift Pure Cry.'

....Has the momentum and fascination of a detective story. In a densely woven tapestry of poetic language, sensations and childhood experience, Dowd's characters stumble through life, bewildered and bereaved, accepting yet rebelling, reviving feelings and emotions that are most usually pushed into the back recesses of the mind in adulthood, or simply lost from memory.

... How extraordinary is the image of the pink dress Shell pulls out of a wardrobe: the dress her mother was wearing at the dance where her father fell in love with her. The layers of raw realism are swept apart by ancient truths... As with all good stories, although the prototype may be the same the details are different; and the differences here lie in the very Irishness of the setting, the cultural context of the story and in the fresh voice of a new author. -- Jamila Gavin

Movingly written, this is a sad but not a dismal story, given Shell's resilient personality and the support she gets from a generous-hearted priest. This debut novel is a fine and memorable achievement: it never sells its characters short and always stays close to what was thought to have happened at the time. -- Nick Tucker

A superb first novel, beautifully written, deeply moving and full of heartbreak. Siobhan Dowd writes without judgment but with enormous sympathy and understanding, capturing Shell's confusion and the hypercritical and chaotic thinking of the small Irish community in which she is growing up. -- Julia Eccleshare.

'The place brought to mind a sinking ship. With this arresting sentence, Siobhan Dowd opens her debut novel, taking all comers captive. Escape is not an option thereafter.

The language is simple, the imagery evocative. The story is sad and familiar. It heaves with memories of another lifetime, like a family album. The crime is that this novel is classified as a children's book when what it is is, in fact, a coming-of-age book. It is about the defining event in a teenage girl's life when she is forced to surrender her child-hood. At the same time, another character is having to grow up too. That character is Ireland…

The paroxysms that engulfed Ireland in 1984 felt like a turning point then. With this novel, Siobhan Dowd looks back and confirms that they were. Her story, like those other stories, is about love, religion and loss. A husband grieves for his wife. A daughter grieves for her mother. A country grieves for its old certainties. This is a parable of epiphanies. It should be read by anyone who is or ever was a teenager. -- Justine McCarthy

Claustrophobic feelings of oppression are all pervasive in an inward-looking rural community. The plight of the deserted pregnant heroine (her mother dead, her father an alcoholic) is conveyed with compassion and tenderness. People at first ignore her condition. When tragedy strikes, they all too readily comment, gossip and speculate. A very human account to make readers weep yet also rejoice in the support she gains from her younger brother and sister, and her own innate ability to generate feelings of joy. -- Lesley Agnew

Powerful imagery and lyrical prose is woven throughout this unforgettable, outstanding and ultimately hopeful novel.

A beautifully written and heartbreaking story... the story will be familiar to everyone in Ireland but is no less shocking for that.

This (Siobhan's) first novel, is a haunting tale of a young Irish Catholic girl, Shell, whose pregnancy isolates from her community and almost brings about her downfall and death, regardless of her abusive upbringing and desperate life. A page-turner from the start, the story stays with you long after you read the last word and will, undoubtedly, be an instant bestseller.

From the innovative publisher David Fickling comes a fine debut novel by Siobhan Dowd. Seen through the eyes of 15-year-old Shell, A Swift Pure Cry is told with the innocence and tension of youth. When her mother dies, her father turns to religion, then alcohol, leaving Shell to care for her young siblings. Disillusioned with school, she shares cigarettes, jokes and sex with two friends but with the arrival of the young, compassionate Father Rose the spirit of her mother returns and the everyday life of the claustrophobic community of Coolbar is imbued with spirituality as she sees that "the plain people of Nazareth were no different from those of County Cork".

The setting and the atmosphere is beautifully realised as the calm tempo moves to a crescendo.

This is a story that will arouse strong feelings... told without a hint of sentiment or self-pity there is a tremendous sense of honesty in the fine writing. - Carousel

Beautifully and economically written and full of close and heartbreaking observation. - Daily Echo (Bournemouth)