A review by bgg616
Shadows On Our Skin by Jennifer Johnston

5.0

This book was deservedly shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize. The author still lives in Derry, the site of this story. It is a simple story revolving around a boy and a female friend, a teacher, his brother, who is in the IRA, his semi-invalid father (supposedly an IRA hero), and his hardworking, bitter mother. The poverty of life in working class Derry permeates the book, a poverty worsened by the unrest of the Troubles. There are shootings nearly every day, yet young Joe walks back and forth to school around and through it. While the Troubles permeate the lives of people, particularly poor Nationalist residents, simultaneously people carry on living and working. Joe is a lonely boy who daydreams in school, and writes poems in his head. His unlikely friendship with a young, lonely teacher, a woman from another place, is believable, and is definitely of this time, the 1970's and place, Derry. Johnston is a genius at wroughting portraits of lonely people in the stark landscape of Northern Ireland of the time.