The Twelfth Day of July: A Kevin and Sadie Story

This is a book for young teenagers, set against the backdrop of Northern Ireland just before the outbreak of the Troubles. The plot is simple: a feisty Catholic boy and a feisty Protestant girl, living in inner-city Belfast neighbourhoods separated only by a main road, lead alternate mischief-making expeditions into each other's territory until things get out of hand and a sacrifice, Romeo and Juliet style, is required to bring the sides back to their senses. The characterization is a bit perfunctory (Kevin is feisty; Sadie, on the other hand, is feisty) but the setting, leading up to the Twelfth, is well drawn. The book was written in 1970 and is unobtrusively matter-of-fact about being poor at the time: no-one has a phone, cars break down all the time, and chip pan fires play a prominent role. The police are not reacted to in an openly sectarian way, as you imagine they would have been if the book had been written only a few years later, but it's noticeable that the Catholic parents are spoiling for a fight with them more than the Protestant parents are. Missing from the book's even-handedness is any strong sense of the real asymmetry of rhetoric that you experience on the ground (Catholics are inferior, Protestants are oppressive): actions on one side are almost exactly mirrored on the other, and when the symmetry is broken it's done against type (the Catholic girl is painstaking, the Protestant girl is careless). The best parts are the set pieces: a trip to the zoo, a trip to the beach, and especially the climactic scene where, without it ever having been explicitly stated, everyone becomes aware that a big fight's coming up.

I thoght this book was really good. Joan Lingard wasn't afraid to show you what things are really like. All in all it was EXCELLENT.By John Pears Cleveden Secondary Glasgow Scotland.(Oban Drive Campus)

I'm still giving this 5 stars, though Across the Barricades was better. It was really good the way they become friends at the end.

What I enjoyed about this book was that it shows no matter how different people they can get along. Kevin and Sadie became friends in the end.