Siobhán Parkinson

Life
issued Amelia (1995), the story of a 13-year old Quaker girl Amelia Pim, faced with sudden family set-backs in 1914; issued prize-winning teenagers’ novel Breaking the Wishbone (1999), a tale of homelessness and pregnancy; issued Call of the Whales (2001), in which Tyke journeys with his anthropologist father to the Arctic and is rescued from hypothermia by his new-found Eskimo friend; issued The Thirteenth Room (2004), a story of a Dublin nurse who moves to the country to live with cousins and finds herself at the centre of a whirlpool of recriminations in a family blighted by the death of a daughter who resembles her in circumstances reminiscent of the Ann Lovett affair in rural Ireland; issued Painted Ladies (2010), based on the love story of the Skagen group painters Marie Triepke and Søren Kroyer.

Siobhán Parkinson has a Facebook page at - www.facebook.com/siobhan.parkinson.writer.

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Works

For children [selected]
  • Amelia (Dublin : O’Brien Press, 1995), 199pp.
  • All Shining in the Spring: The Story of a Baby who Died (Dublin : O’Brien Press, 1995), 63pp., ill. [by Donald Teskey].
  • Breaking the Wishbone (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1999), 188pp. [infra].
  • Call of the Whales (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2001), 140pp.
  • Cows are Vegetarians (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2001), 71pp.
  • Animals Don't Have Ghosts (Dublin: O’Brien Press 2002), 79pp.
  • The Love Bean (Dublin: O’Brien Press 2002), 187pp.
  • The Thirteen Room (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 2003), 227pp..
  • Kate (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2006), 158pp. [orig. Kathleen, Wisconsin: Pleasant Co. 2003].
  • Blue Like Friday (2007), q.pp.
  • ...]
  • Painted Ladies (Dublin: New Island Press 2010), 334pp.

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Criticism
Sue Leonard, review of The Thirteenth Room, in Books Ireland (March 2004), p.56.

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Quotations
Breaking the Wishbone (1999), Caroline: ‘I ... I ... told Samantha in the end, I had to ... I had to tell someone, but I’m not telling Beano ... not yet. If I can just hold out ... just for a bit ... it’ll be all right, won’t it? I ... I ... won’t tell him till it’s too late, and then he’ll just have to accept it, won’t he? What ... what else can he do? Yeah, well ... I suppose there's loads of things he can do, aren’t there? I ... know what he’s like ... under ... all that clever-clever stuff and all that cool-dude stuff, hard as ... hard as, what’s dead hard? Diamonds? Yeah, hard as diamonds... and just as glitzy too. Yeah, I like that. Hard and sparkling, that's Beano ... but no heart, just ... just seethrough... all the way into... the blinding centre and out the other side ... distorted. Oh God, what am I going to do?’ (p.55.)

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