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IrishPenJen (United Kingdom) (2012/09/16):
Description:
It's the start of the summer, and like his friends Dodge, Eyebrows and Pinhead, thirteen-year-old Sean 'Nod' Hickey is looking forward to a good one. But the summer doesn't turn out as any of the boys expect. The long hot days of swimming, hurling, and great laughs like 'the marble thing' cannot gloss over the tensions that begin to surface as awakening sexuality and family pressures erupt into jealousy, aggression and revenge. It is, however, to Sean and Pinhead that the summer and the novel really belong. With subtlety and sensitivity, Helena Close charts the complex dynamics of their friendship: the growing closeness between the boys; their dramatic clashes and conflicts; and the gradual unravelling of their relationship as they struggle to make sense of friendship, love and, most painfully of all, death. Helena Close captures perfectly the raw energy, vulnerability, pain and downright hilarity that is part of growing up. Set in the Limerick of the 1970s, Pinhead Duffy is a moving, funny and multi-layered evocation of the lives of four boys on the brink of manhood.What the papers say:
'Heartfelt and heart warming, Pinhead Duffy is a glorious account of that last childhood. Summer when everything seems perfect, and before everything changes forever. 'Catcher in the Rye' comes to Limerick.' journalist Mary Coll Author's Biography:
HELENA CLOSE was born in Cork in 1959 and moved to Limerick when she was four years old. A keen writer since childhood, she has worked in public relations and journalism but now writes full time. She is co-author, along with her life long friend, Trisha Rainsford of two other books, Hot Property (2003) and Gazumped! (2004) under the pen name Sarah O'Brien. They are currently working on two more books. Helena is an obsessive sports fanatic, particularly rugby and Liverpool F.C. She lives in Limerick with her husband, three of her four children, dog and three-legged cat.
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