Described by Senator David Norris as the best Irish big house novel of the 20th century, Girl on a Bicycle is a tour-de-force debut novel. This novel tells of Julie De Vraie s attempts to forge her own way in the world, taking up her first paid employment, emerging from her sister's shadow and adjusting to the sometimes harsh realities of the sexual interactions between men and women.
It is an unforgettable novel of love and longing, written in spare, poetic prose, and perfectly captures the spirit of 1940's Ireland. Julie is young, impressionable and passionate. However, she lives at a most passionless time. Against the backdrop of 'The Emergency' at home, the chaos in Europe, the Catholic state and her own Protestant up-bringing she searches for freedom. To be free was to be an outcast, and as such, she becomes imprisoned in a deep chaos of her own.
Girl on a Bicycle is Leland Bardwell's first novel and it introduced several of the themes that continue to resurface in Bardwell's subsequent writing. Dislocation, anti-authoritarian tendencies, sexual curiosity tempered by the stringencies of the day, and the confusion and castigation of the 'misfit' all merge in this coming-of-age novel.
This book also serves to illuminate a society that is coming of age and is pushing against its own boundaries of independence, religion and new found nation identity in a Europe torn apart by war. Booker prize-nominated author, Anthony Burgess has described it as 'a literary gem'.
About the author: Leland Bardwell (Nee Hone), was born in India, grew up in Leixlip and was educated in Alexandra School, Dublin with some extra mural studies in London University. She has published five novels, the most recent, Mother to a Stranger, was a bestselling work in translation in Germany. Also translated into both German and Turkish was her collection of short stories, Different Kinds of Love. Her novel The House was recently re-published as a Classic by Blackstaff.
She has had countless radio plays and stories on RTE and three major stage plays, including The Life of Edith Piaf as well as five collections of poetry, the latest: The Noise of Masonry Settling, published by Dedalus 2006. In 1993 she received the Martin Toonder Award. She is a co-editor of the long-running literary magazine, Cyphers. She is a member of Aosdana and lives in County Sligo.
ISBN: 9781905483792
