Emer McCourt Livres

ELVIS, JESUS AND ME is a quirky and touching story about a girl who wants to be a boy. Ger's story is told by her nine-year-old brother, Seany, an endearing and bitingly funny narrator. Ger wants to be a boy but Jesus isn't having any of it, which begs the question; if God can send a man to the moon why can't He turn her into a boy and if He can't, does He even exist and who cares anyway when Elvis can sing 'Jail House Rock' as sweetly as any virgin and helps Ger to forget her worries about whether she'll burn in hell for kidnapping an altar boy or for kissing a girl or for showing her knickers to the world... Ger and her younger brother Seany - two different peas in one freshly plucked pod; ask and answer, watch and wait and move and shake their way through toolsheds, wakes, dangerous weapons, chipolatas, The Holy Trinity and The O' Rawe sister's guide to life and love, in a world where conversations with Neil Armstrong colour their young world with wisdom that can only come from the stars......

There are three idols pinned up on the wall above Ger's spot in the top bunk in their house on a council estate in Northern Ireland: Jesus, Elvis, and Neil Armstrong. When all three fail to answer her prayers to become a boy, Ger takes it upon herself to perform her own mini miracle with a strategically placed sausage. This is only one of her attempts to change her identity, aided somewhat unwillingly by Seany. And even though larger, tougher forces—both in their family and in their country—impinge on Ger and Seany's plots, these bond between the two means they never quite lose their engaging sense of humor and grit.