Bog Child

Dowd, S. (2008). Bog child. New York: David Fickling Books. ISBN 978-0-385-75169-8

Why read this book

A Catholic boy in Northern Ireland, where Protestants and Catholics have been killing each other since before he was born, Fergus is torn between his desire to support his family and friends in the struggle to get Britain out of Ireland and his desire to emigrate somewhere more sane and be done with it all.

Plot summary

Fergus is in his final year of high school in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. Protestants and Catholics are engaged in an all-out struggle about whether Northern Ireland should join the rest of Ireland, as Catholics have wanted since the Republic of Ireland was founded in 1919, or remain as a part of the United Kingdom and be ruled from London, as the Protestants prefer. Fergus lives in a farming community away from the violence of the cities, but it’s impossible to isolate himself from the conflict. His older brother Joe is on a hunger strike in a British jail, which, of course, has put their whole family under huge stress. One of Joe’s friends, who everyone assumes is also actively supporting the Irish Republican Army, the military arm of the Catholic movement, pressures Fergus to secretly carry mysterious small packages across the border into Ireland when Fergus takes his regular long-distance run through the hills. Fergus is not afraid of being caught smuggling so much as he is afraid that his actions make him a part of the violence that plagues everyone he knows. He yearns to grow up in a land without “the Troubles,” as the conflict is called, but he can’t turn his back on his brother Joe and his other family and friends.

Fergus’s only relief from the tension comes when an anthropologist from Ireland named Felicity and her teenage daughter Cora periodically rent a room in his family’s home. The anthropologist is investigating a “bog child,” an ancient, preserved body that Fergus and his Uncle Tally discovered up in the hills one day when they were cutting peat for sale. Fearful of losing their business, Fergus’s mother won’t let anyone in the family talk about the Troubles when Felicity and Cora are in the house. Felicity and Cora do not even know that the older son in the family is on a hunger strike. Cora is a well-traveled, adventurous young woman; she and Fergus hit it off right away, and the time Fergus spends with Cora reinforces his yearning for a life away from Northern Ireland.

As Felicity slowly uncovers evidence about the bog child and her death, a second narrative emerges, a reimagining of the child’s life 2,000 years before. Parallels to the violence in that life and the world around Fergus suggest that little has changed over the centuries, but Fergus has an option that the bog child did not. Fergus can leave. He can build a new life elsewhere. Will he?

Critical evaluation

Mirroring life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Bog Child is not limited to a story of character but is a story of plot, as well. The conflict is not only within Fergus as he figures out his future, but also all around him in the violent conflict that shapes daily life in his community. There is suspense around Joe’s fate as a hunger striker, there is suspense around Fergus running contraband across the border, and there is suspense in the discovery of the bog child’s fate. Dowd resolves these conflicts mercifully. Fergus and Joe’s parents are, of course, deeply troubled by Joe’s hunger strike, but the tension does not destroy their family. Fergus’s contraband running does not explode in his face, and the bog child’s story is hopeful as well as tragic. It is as if Dowd, writing after the Troubles had abated considerably, wrote in a way that allows the reader to examine them without indulging in the bitterness that fueled them. Bog Child is about remembering while moving on.

Although the blog child’s narrative is brief in comparison to Fergus’s story, it adds depth to the novel both in the added suspense and in the opportunities for placing the Troubles in a historical context. The bog child’s story joins Joe’s story and Cora’s story as a third model for Fergus to ponder as he tries to decide what to do with his life. The bog child’s death is re-imagined as a consequence of ancient superstition from which she could not escape, suggesting that Joe’s life is jeopardized by similar, contemporary commitments to not-so-modern ways of thinking. Cora, on the other hand, raised in modern Ireland where the struggle with the British is well in the past, represents life’s potential. When Fergus makes his choice, we understand clearly how his knowledge of the past and his experiences in his young life have shaped it.

About the author

Siobhan Dowd was born in England to Irish Catholic parents in 1960. Although raised in England, she spent summers in Ireland with her family during her youth. She earned a B.A. in Classics from Oxford University and an M.A. in Gender and Ethnic Studies from Greenwich University. In 1984 she began working for PEN, the international writers’ organization, moving to New York in 1990 to work at the PEN American Center. During her seven years in New York she founded the Rushdie Defense Committee USA and traveled to Guatemala and Indonesia to support for writers in those countries.

Dowd’s first published works were two anthologies she edited for PEN’s Threatened Literature Series, This Prison Where I Live: The PEN Anthology of Imprisoned Writers (1996) and The Roads of the Roma: A PEN Anthology of Gypsy Writers (1998). Her first young adult novel was A Swift Pure Cry (2006), the story of an impoverished 15-year-old Catholic girl who gives birth to an illegitimate child. It was well received by critics, as was her second young adult novel, The London Eye Mystery (2007), which features a young boy with Asperger’s condition whose eye for detail proves valuable when his visiting cousin disappears.

Siobhan Dowd died of breast cancer August 21, 2007 (Tucker, 2007). Bog Child was completed but unpublished at the time of her death, as was Solace of the Road, which was just published in October 2009. Shortly before her death, Dowd established The Siobhan Dowd Trust “to ensure that disadvantaged children and young people have access to books, experience the joy of reading and develop their literacy to safeguard their future” (The Siobhan Dowd Trust, 2009). The royalties from her four young adult novels support the work of the trust.

Genre: Coming of age, Historical fiction, International

Curriculum ties

Modern World History – Bog Child would be a good introduction to a study of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Although it does not explicitly describe particular historical events from the period, it creates a human context for historical study by conveying the emotional ramifications of the conflict for many people.

Book-talking ideas

• Read the pages where Fergus discovers the body of the bog child while out cutting peat with his uncle (p. 8-11), including Fergus’s insistence that they report the find to the authorities.

• Read the suspenseful pages where Fergus’s encounters Owain, the Welsh border guard with whom he has become friendly, during one of Fergus’s runs through the hills and over the border while he is carrying contraband (p. 210-212).

• Show the YouTube book trailer.

Reading level/interest age

The length (322 pages) of the novel and the complexity of the themes make it more appropriate for older teens.

Challenge issues

The story is told primarily from the Catholic Irish viewpoint, which might provoke a challenge from those more sympathetic to the Protestant Irish viewpoint. The f-word appears periodically and there are discrete sexual encounters between Fergus and Cora.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

• Inform the challenger that the book does not overtly attack Protestants on either religious or political grounds; at worst the book omits their perspective.

• Direct the challenger to the list on The Siobhan Dowd Trust web site of awards the book has received.

• Remind the challenger that royalties from the book go to support the charitable work of The Siobhan Dowd Trust.

Why I chose to read this book

I saw Bog Child while browsing YA literature in a bookstore and jumped at the chance to read something by an author who is not from the United States.

References

Tucker, N. (2007, August 24). Siobhan Dowd: Rising star of children’s literature. The Independent Obituaries. Retrieved November 8, 2009, from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/siobhan-dowd-462781.html

The Siobhan Dowd Trust (2009). Retrieved November 8, 2009, from http://www.siobhandowdtrust.com/