Solace of the Road

Dowd, S. (2009). Solace of the road. New York: David Fickling Books. ISBN 978-0-375-84971-8

Why read this book

Why would Holly Hogan, who’s been living in youth homes for years, throw away her chance to lead a regular life with a kind middle-class couple in suburban London? What’s she looking for when she hits the road on the eve of her fifteenth birthday?

Plot summary

Holly Hogan is 14 years old and has been a ward of the state in England since her mother suddenly returned to their native Ireland some years before. Holly’s been living in a youth home with her buddies Grace and Trim, and her counselor, Miko, but now she has a chance to live with a childless middle age couple in a nice house in suburban London. Holly is guarded in her acceptance of her new life. She gets along okay at school, but she spends a lot of time in her room at home by herself, especially once she finds her foster mother’s blond wig and starts reimagining herself as Solace, a saucy girl who looks a few years older than the real Holly. Near the end of the school year, on the eve of her fifteenth birthday, Holly decides to become Solace full time and runs away from home. She knows exactly where she’s headed. She wants to go to Ireland and find her mother.

Dowd creates a convincing and detailed narrative of Holly’s two-day and two-night run for the border. Holly takes a bus to Oxford and then hitchhikes west, through Wales, to a port where she knows she can get a ferry across the Irish Sea. Being on the road opens her mind to memories that she never understood before and helps her figure out who she is and who she wants to be.

Critical evaluation

Holly is a beautifully rendered unreliable narrator. It’s clear from the beginning of her story that she’s not coming clean on her relationship with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend and the circumstances that separated them. It’s hard for the reader to know if Holly is hiding things or if she simply doesn’t remember them well, but we know there is more going on than meets the eye. Holly is also an unreliable narrator with the people she meets on her road trip. We never know what’s going to come out of her mouth when she gets in a conversation. We know a lot of it isn’t true because we were there when earlier events happened, but sometimes Holly comes out with something that just might be true, something that might be another clue to the past that she is wrestling with.

Dowd does a remarkable job of showing the reader how Holly’s experiences on the road help her untangle her confused past. As she discovers how the world works by being out there in it, she becomes increasingly insightful about her relationship with her mother and how she has rendered it her own mind.

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 develop support for writers in those countries.

Dowd’s first published works were two anthologies she edited in 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 syndrone whose eye for detail proves valuable when his visiting cousin disappears.

Siobhan Dowd died of breast cancer August 21, 2007 (Tucker, 2007). She left two young adult novels completed but unpublished at the time of her death. Bog Child, which was published in 2008, and 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: International, Life is hard

Curriculum ties

It would be fun to have students read Solace of the Road after they have read Jane Eyre, since Holly reads the latter in school and references it regularly while she is on the road. The literary devices that Dowd employs, such as the symbolic roles of the blond wig and a ring with an amber stone that Holly’s mother gave her, are rich enough to make this novel effective in a high school literature course.

Book-talking ideas

• Read the events at the beginning of Chapter 10 where Holly’s foster parents have an argument on the morning that Holly decides to run away. Focus students’ attention on the iron, which is subtly employed to foreshadow a major development later in the novel.

• Read the first few pages of Chapter 26, where Holly is getting to know Phil, the vegan truck driver who picks her up. There’s tension about how a truck driver will treat a 15-year-old on her first hitchhiking experience, but Phil comes off pretty quickly as an okay guy while Holly is the one who isn’t to be trusted.

Reading level/interest age

The protagonist is 15 at the time of the story, and the prose is straightforward enough that I can imagine a middle school student reading Solace of the Road. The protagonist’s emotional development should make the story engaging to older teens.

Challenge issues

It’s hard to imagine anyone challenging this novel, which includes no sex, no violence, and no profanity. All the characters are presented with dignity, regardless of their shortcomings.

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.”

Why I chose to read this book

I enjoyed Bog Child very much and wanted to read another book by Siobhan Dowd. I find Solace of the Road to be even more tightly crafted and more powerful in its impact.

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/