[This book was provided to me for no monies by the publisher, Open Road Media, facilitated in this act by NetGalley. I thanks them for it.]

I had never heard of Jennifer Johnston until this book cropped up in my feed, which is surprising given the amount she's written and the awards she's picked up. On the other hand, given the trouble I'm having trying to think of anything to say about this book, maybe I can understand it.

Published in 1977 and short-listed for the Booker Prize, Shadows on Our Skin is the story of a Catholic schoolboy's friendship with a young Protestant teacher in Northern Ireland. As can be expected from a literary work, we're in the land of people living their lives rather than a didactic "wouldn't it be nice if everybody was nice?" tale. The darkness and the politics of 70's Belfast is, for much of the book, subtext; we are given a boy's life, one of distant bangs and of a mother who angers when he doesn't come straight home from school, but only until we are not.

Shadows on Our Skin is beautifully written if a little opaque at times. Perhaps it is that I am coming to a contemporary work from a modern perspective, so I found things - and in particular, the delicately phrased ending - a little hard to get hold of. The narrative stays with Joe, certain events staying off-screen, and I had many questions about why certain characters did and didn't do things. It was the feeling of things I didn't get rather than one of plot holes. 

This is well worth reading, but at the same time I rather lack enthusiasm for it. I'm going to give it 3.5 stars because the writing is wonderful, but on a purely personal level I didn't make an emotional connection with this book although I have a lot of objective appreciation for it.

The Fish Palace made this one sound good. It's still up on NetGalley so I put in a request which was kindly approved by the good people at Open Road Integrated Media. Harumble!

I'm not familiar with this publisher but they have a real mix of ARCs up, including Laurie Lee (who is best known for Cider With Rosie) and Manju Kapur (an Indian writer whose books I've really enjoyed in the past - if I wasn't going to be slammed with stuff next week I'd already have a request in for Difficult Daughters too). 

Disclaimer: Digital ARC of the Open Road Media edition read courtesy Open Road and Netgalley.

                This book was apparently shortlisted for the Man Booker prize but to call it a book is slightly misleading for it is rather short. The sheer length or lack of length of the work is misleading because despite its shortness it is a heavy, morality tale that focuses on the Trouble and the conflicts that occurred not so much between Catholic and Protestant but between families as each member and the friends try to find a place to stay in the shifting morass.