I didn't even finish reading it because i couldn't get into it, unless you know a lot about the palce it is hard to read and it is not very fact going! ( )

Meg Rosoff review in Guardian Books: "One of the joys of this book is its willingness to confront big themes. Within a fast-paced drama that any 14-year-old can enjoy, Bog Child explores political conflict, personal heroism, human frailty, love and death. As a writer, Dowd appears to be incapable of a jarring phrase or a lazy metaphor. Her sentences sing; each note resonates with an urgent humanity of the sort that cannot be faked. Bog Child sparkles with optimism and a deep passion for living. Love falls from it in particles, like snow."

I love books that interweave different stories and this one surely does that. This takes place 1n 1981 in Northern Ireland where IRA militants are on hunger strike in prison in order to be recognized as political prisoners and separated from common prisoners. England is under Margaret Thatcher and tensions are high. 18-year-old Fergus just wants to pass his exams and leaver Northern Ireland behind and study medicine but his brother is on hunger strike, he has come upon the ancient body of of a murdered girl in the bog and he's falling in love. Also, a slimy representative from Sinn Fein has him running secret packages back and cross across the border between the north and south. I highly recommend the book on cd narrated by Sile Bermingham. ( )

"They'd stolen a march on the day. The sky was like dark glass, reluctant to let the light through. The only sound was the chudder of the van skirting the lough. The surface of the water was colourless. The hills slumped down on the far side like silhouettes of snoozing giants." Bog Child is an exciting novel that grabs the reader's attention from page one.

It all starts when Fergus and his uncle are digging up cuts from an Ireland peat bog. Then Fergus notices something. "There's something here. In the earth. A hand." ... "It's a body." What seems like a recent murder is soon discovered to be an ancient artifact -- the body of a girl, perfectly preserved by the bog.

As the story unfurls, Fergus begins to hear the girl's voice telling him her painful history. In addition, he must deal with problems of his own, such as that of his brother being on hunger strike. A sweet, adolescent love story also exists in the novel, between Fergus and the archaeologist's daughter.

As the story of Mel, the "bog child," is learned, parallels between her and Fergus's lives are revealed, including the belief that love's power can redeem the human soul, one of many themes in the novel. Other themes explored include political conflict, personal heroism, and death. Telling the story with beautiful detail, Siobhan Dowd will make you never want to put her book down. ( )

Excellent story taking place in a town on the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. A mummified body is discovered by a boy who falls in love with the anthropologist's daughter, worries about his older brother in prison, and is talked into carrying mysterious packages back and forth across the border. ( )