The Call by Peadar O'Guilin. Unabridged audiobook on 7 compact discs. Read by Amy Shiels. Blackstone Publishing/ Scholastic Audio, 9781338163797. (Purchased)
Goodbye July, hello August! Happy reading everyone! It's time for Teen Tuesday, books of interest to students in grades 7 & up. This week's TT is featuring The Call by Peadar O'Guilin. O'Guilin is an Irish writer who, helpfully provided a guide to pronouncing his name on his website - Padder Oh Gilleen. It also helped that I read this book with my ears because it takes place in Ireland sometime in the future. The Irish narrator was spectacular! After a long period of banishment, the Sidhe (fairy folk) have cut Ireland off from the rest of the world and are making regular incursions to "call" her young into "The Grey Land." This call lasts just 3 minutes, 4 seconds in our time, but a day in Sidhe time where, the teen, naked and panicked must rely on his or her wits to survive. Most don't, and their mutilated corpses are returned. Those that do return are maimed or emotionally damaged. Yeah, brutal and terrifying. The Irish government attempts to train teens by setting up survival colleges. Nessa, the fourteen-year-old main character in The Call attends Boyle Survival College where she's crushing on Anto, a pacifist classmate and trying to avoid the attention of Connor, a brutal bully who feels that Nessa, whose legs were ruined by polio, should not be a student. It's a survival story. It's Irish mythology. It's for fans of dystopian literature and it's edge-of-your-seat suspenseful.
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