Girl on a Bicycle

Girl on a Bicycle, Leland Bardwell’s first novel, is the story of Julie De Vraie's attempts to forge her own way in the world, taking up her first paid employment, emerging from her sister’s shadow and adjusting to the sometimes harsh realities of the sexual interactions between men and women. Julie is young, impressionable and passionate. However, she lives at a most passionless time. Against the backdrop of the ‘Emergency’ at home, the chaos in Europe, the Catholic state and her own Protestant up-bringing she searches for freedom. To be free was to be an outcast, and as such, she becomes imprisoned in a deep chaos of her own. Re-published by Liberties Press, this is an unforgettable novel of love and longing, written in spare, poetic prose, and perfectly captures the spirit of 1940s Ireland.