(courtesy Penguin Books Australia)
Not a lot goes right in life for the two titular characters at the heart of Karl Geary’s arrestingly moving novel, Juno Loves Legs.
Born into poverty in 1970s Dublin, they are both well and truly up against from the get-go in their economically deprived estate; while they receive an education, it’s at the hands of Catholic nuns and priests who are apt to be abusive than nurturing, and any sense of a cosy, caring family environment to make up for that loss of educational sustenance, is dashed pretty quickly as it’s established that neither has the family of the dreams.
Juno, whom when we meet her is 11 or 12, likely has the better deal but not by much; while her mam is a no-nonsense housewife doing her best to bring in some extra sewing money to supply their income from the dole and palpably loves her daughter, her father is a drunkard, a man who spends his days drinking, and when he gets home, neglecting his wife and child.
Theirs is not a happy life but what buoys Juno when she realises what she’s got is the friendship of Legs, her nickname for Séan, the boy who lives a few doors down with a mother who clearly loathes her son although why that is isn’t fully established until Juno and Legs reunite some years later in their late teens
My room was frozen. The curtains were open and when I turned on the light, my reflection sharpened in the dark windowpane. I stood and watched myself alone in the room. They were silent downstairs, the occasional tap tap of Mam’s needles and Da’s shifting weight, the creaking of his wooden chair. Mam was first up the stairs. I could hear her steps to the bathroom. I closed my eyes and turned away from the door, setting myself as quick as a knocked mannequin, waiting to see if she checked on me. And when her own bedroom door opened and closed shut. I was all of a sudden alone.
It’s this friendship that is the one beacon of hope in both their blighted lives, and while it doesn’t inoculate from the destructive vicissitudes that beset them without interruption and with no care or favour of any kind, it does give them an unconditional love and port in the storm that otherwise would wholly elude them.
They are always there for each other.
Juno fights off Legs’ bullies, while he in turn takes whatever measure to protect Juno from her cruel treatment at the hands of her teacher, a nun, and the Father who oversees the school with a nasty authoritarianism that shows little of Christ’s love and far too much of a dictator’s love of rules enforcement and human degradation.
They are each other’s line of best defence in childhoods that are woefully lacking in carefree fun and buoyant family love, and if it weren’t for that close bond, both likely would’ve fared even worse than they do as life goes on.
It’s this undying friendship that sustains them, making Juno Loves Legs a prevailing love letter to the power of friendship’s ability to not necessarily remake the world for the better, because quite clearly that doesn’t happen at any point and it will break your heart as horrible development piles in top of grim life reality, but to make it survivable, maybe not with all your humanity and robust sense of self intact but more intact that it would otherwise be.
It is certainly all that stands between Juno and Legs and the world callously and uncaringly eating them alive and spitting them right back out again.
(courtesy official Karl Geary Twitter/X account)
Let’s be clear – for all its beautifully evocative writing and touching evocation of the power of selfless friendship and unconditional love, Juno Loves Legs is tough going.
It does not spare you the details of the terrible things meted out to both characters; nor does it blithely shrug off how broken families and brutalising occupation of the lower rungs of society and spin some some of fetching fairytale end to proceedings.
Dublin of the late 1970s into the 1980s is not a factory of dreams for many people, and while there are signs of its eventual renaissance into the diverse, creative powerhouse it is today, the city that greets, or rather doesn’t greet, Juno and Legs still is more apt to kick its poorer residents down again rather than make any attempts to lift them up.
Juno and Legs don’t necessarily expect that to happen – they are sagely realistic and pragmatic about life and aren’t looking for glittery, shiny happy-ever-afters because they don’t necessarily believe they exist; and even when opportunities do present themselves, events often dictate that they cannot be taken up – and so Juno Loves Legs is not about dreams being broken or hopes dashed.
They never really existed in the first place, and so what you get instead of some trite story of life magically getting better, are two people scrabbling to survive based solely on the strength and flawed power of the gift of the friendship that holds them close even after some fairly traumatic events.
‘Oh f*ck, I can’t,’ I say, ‘I can’t, I can’t. Please, I don’t want you to look at me, please.’ Legs folded his arms around me.
‘You’re alright, I’m here now, I’ve got you.’
For all of that grimness, Juno Loves Legs does have a thread of hope running through it.
When it matters most, and good lord it is called upon far more than any friendship should be, Juno Loves Legs is a love song to the power of friendship to hold you up, even if it’s barely above the water, and to get you somewhere you can at least, if nothing else, catch your breath.
And it’s power is on full display in the final act of the book where Juno is rescued from a precarious situation by Legs who himself is staring down the abyss of some and terrible times.
Neither is living their best life nor do they have the prospect of doing that – at one point, it looks like both their lives might be about to turn the corner, but very quickly, life steps in and demands surviving over thriving yet again – but they have each other, and it is their simple presence in each other’s lives that is the difference between some sort of flawed existence and oblivion (though it becomes clear that one of them will head into the abyss come what may and it’s simply a question of how brutal the landing is).
So, yes, while Juno Loves Legs isn’t exactly a joyfest of life’s buoyant hopes and possibilities, it is a heartrending and soul healing paean to the power of friendship to sustain us and keep us alive when nothing else will, and how in lives blighted by every possible bad thing the world can throw at them, it means the difference between life and death, surviving and living, and crucially, between ending it all now and taking tentative steps forward to whatever the future holds.