Reviews of A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle

One

Mary O'Hara was walking up her street, to the house she lived in with her parents and her brothers. The school bus had dropped her at the corner, at the bottom of the hill. The street was long, straight, and quite steep, and there were huge old chestnut trees growing all along both sides. It was raining, but Mary wasn't getting very wet, because the leaves and branches were like a roof above her. Anyway, rain and getting wet were things that worried adults, but not Mary - or anyone else under the age of twenty-one. Mary was twelve. She'd be twelve for another eight months. Then she'd be what she already felt she was - a teenager.

She came home at the same time most days, and she usually came home with her best friend, Ava. But today was different, because Ava wasn't with Mary. Ava had moved to another part of Dublin the day before, with her family. Today, some of the neighbors looked out their windows and saw Mary, alone. They knew all about it, of course....

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. What is the significance of greyhounds in the story?
2. If you could go back in time and ask one person one question, who would it be and what would you ask?
3. What is the role of the flu in the story? How does it help frame the differences in the four generations of women?
4. Ghosts are represented differently by different authors. If you were writing a ghost story, what would your ghost(s) look like? What would be the details of their haunting? Would they feel the cold, for instance? Be otherworldly-looking or ordinary?
5. What is something all four women in A Greyhound of a Girl have in common? How does this shape the story?
6. The characters in the book, particularly Mary, are often described as "cheeky." How does this character trait impact ...