A Flavour of the Book: “The snarl of the dog that was waiting for me in the room
sounded like a klaxon and I threw myself backwards as it lunged for me. I landed with a sickening thud right
onto my coccyx and a current of pain shot up into my lower back…”
The Authortrek view:
It’s hard to believe that Wednesday’s Child first started life as a
doctoral thesis, because this book is far from being a dry piece of
Academia. Instead, Wednesday’s
Child reads like a novel, as Shane Dunphy discovers, like Clare Littleford
before him, that the world of social work is ripe with drama, with conflicts
between social workers as well as within dysfunctional families. However, what makes Wednesday’s
Child more heartbreaking is that all these stories are true. Your heart sinks as Shane has to battle
against the inequities of the system as well as bad parents. There is some dramatic licence, as
Shane Dunphy has distilled 15 years’ worth of experience into a narrative
spanning a year, and you can’t help thinking that Shane’s resolution at the end
of the book might be a tad premature…
Wednesday’s Child is a book that leaves the reader in an
unsettling predicament: you want more of Shane Dunphy’s light and thrilling prose,
but you know that these stories ultimately derive from the darkest parts of
human nature, and that in ideal world, these stories should never have happened
in the first place. Shane
successfully brings all the characters in the book to life, from the wretched
abused and self-abusing children, to their monstrous parents. However, Shane Dunphy is so moving in
his narrative that you even have pity for one particularly bad parent.
To
find out more about the author, please visit our Shane Dunphy page.
From the Publisher: "A hearrtrending study of profoundly
dysfunctional families...”°-Irish
Examiner
"(Dunphy)
writes with the flair of a novelist and tells gripping stories - all the more gripping
because they are true and happening on our doorsteps."-Ireland
on Sunday
Wednesday's child is full of woe.
For more thaan fifteen years, Shane Dunphy worked
as a child protection worker in Ireland. It was a job that opened his eyes to a
mountain of avoidable human misery. In Wednesday's Child, Dunphy
has drawn upon his experiences to produce a poignant and often harrowing
testimony that exposes the overwhelming pain and suffering behind the distant,
everyday headlines of child abuse and exploitation.
A top five bbest seller upon its release in
Ireland, Wednesday's Child compresses Dunphy's career into a compelling,
year-long narrative. This powerful account reveals the daily abuse and neglect
suffered by those struggling at the margins of society. Focusing upon three of
the tragic cases he encountered in his work, Dunphy draws the reader into the
traumatic reality of families so sunk in chronic poverty and despair that they
are beyond saving themselves or their children.
•
Gillian
is starving herself to death and in thrall to a mother more interested in
abusing and manipulating her daughter than cherishing and protecting her.
Despite his efforts, it seems Shane is just another adult destined to fail
Gillian...
•
For
the daughter of disturbed violent parents, Connie is an amazingly well adjusted
Agrade student. But when Shane finally gets behind the facade, he unearths a
shattering truth behind her apparent normality...
• Cordelia, Victor and Ibar are three
loving siblings left with a hopelessly alcoholic neglectful father. Can he ever
become the kind of dad he wants to be, or are the family destined to be split
up and sucked into the childcare merry-go-round...
And yet within such social dysfunction, there is still
hope. Despite the odds, there are those who make it through the most appalling
childhood conditions to become adjusted, "normal" adults. But many do
not and Wednesday's Child is as much about dealing with the realities of failure
as a celebration of triumph against the odds. It is a wake-up call for us all.
If you have any more details about this
book or a review you can send it to
authortrekreview@authortrek.com.
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will not publish your email address, or pass it on to other parties. Please
include the author’s name and the book title in the subject line of your email.
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