Girl on a Bicycle (Electronic book text)

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. Girl on a Bicycle is Leland Bardwell's first novel and it introduced several of the themes that continue to resurface in Bardwell's subsequent writing. Dislocation, anti-authoritarian tendencies, sexual curiosity tempered by the stringencies of the day, and the confusion and castigation of the 'misfit' all merge in this coming-of-age novel. This book also serves to illuminate a society that is coming of age and is pushing against its own boundaries of independence, religion and new found nation identity in a Europe torn apart by war. Booker prize-nominated author, Anthony Burgess has described it as 'a literary gem'.