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A Slip of a Girl

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A Slip of a Girl
By Patricia Reilly Giff
Holiday House, 2019. Fiction, pp. 234

Giff's latest book takes an intimate look at an impoverished Ireland, fraught with the lasting effects of the potato famine, and deeply entrenched in a fight for their land. Young Anna Mallon's family is being ripped apart by sickness, emigration, and the rule of the English. After her mother dies and her brothers and sister leave for the United States, Anna is left with her father and her younger sister. When a chain of events separates their dwindling family, Anna is forced to make the grown-up decisions that will protect her and her sisters from the perils and prejudices of the unforgiving Irish landscape and people.

"A Slip of a Girl" is written in verse, and as such gets to the heart of the matter, and to the emotion of the story, very quickly. Readers are thrust immediately into the harsh world of Ireland in the 1800s, but are also swept up in the love and warmth that the Mallon family has for one another. Anna in particular is a brave and resourceful character, giving the story the spunk it needs to carry it through the sorrow. Although the book is a fast read, due to the scarcity of the text, the emotional impact is nothing short of striking.

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