In her last book, Solace of the Road, Siobhan Dowd takes the reader on a gut-wrenching journey with Holly, and her alter-ego, Solace, as she finds her way to facing the pain in her troubled past and possibly moving beyond it to live her life.
A ward of the state since she was a small child, 14 year old Holly has grown jaded and angry on the streets of London. She accepts a placement in a quiet middle class home but can’t let her guard down to accept the comfort and love her foster parents try to show her. The anger and mistrust that has kept Holly safe her whole life bubbles up and explodes regularly, damaging anyone in her path. When she finds a blond wig hidden in her foster mother’s bureau, Holly finds refuge in the girl in the wig whom she names Solace: a beautiful, slim-slam girl who’s cunning, funny, and courageous.
Fed up with everything and tired of fighting the overwhelming desire to find her mum back in Irelend, Holly, emboldened by Solace, runs away. Trusting her street smarts, relying on luck, and propelled by sheer determination (and the naviete of youth), Holly makes her way from the quiet London suburbs west to Oxford, and by hitching rides, train-hopping, and walking, makes her way aboard a ferry to Ireland.
Along the road, Dowd builds considerable narrative tension by putting Holly in harm’s way and one sketchy situation after another. While it’s her courage, bravado and street smarts that help her out of scrapes, it’s also Dowd’s skillful character and plot development that show the reader the larger picture, threats and all, that Holly just barely escapes from time and time again. By no means is this a cautionary tale written by an “I told you so” adult; rather as Holly travels further west both she and the reader begin to realize how much there is she doesn’t know and maybe the idealized “memories” she’s cling to about her mum and her past really aren’t what she thought they were.
Holly is a truly powerful, real character whose emotional struggles, growth and spirit will resonate with readers.
- Posted by Cori