Divided City

Two teenage boys in Glasgow are united – and divided – by one thing: a passion for football. Graham and Joe are in training for a new Youth Team Gold Cup with a chance to represent their city. On the field they have an intuitive rapport, but away from it everything threatens their emerging friendship. Graham’s family is middle-class Protestant and his Granda Reid is a dedicated Orange Man, looking forward to the day when Graham joins him on the traditional Orange Walks. Joe’s family is Catholic, with Irish antecedents, living in the working-class area, the Garngarth.

When Graham strays into Reglan Street, a rough tenement district, after football practice one evening, he crosses boundaries in more ways than one. It means that he is the only witness to a vicious racist attack on a young Muslim man, Kyoul, and reluctantly accompanies him to hospital. An ‘illegal’ refugee from the Balkans, Kyoul needs to keep his identity a secret from the authorities, but he is desperate to send a message to his English girlfriend, Leanne – will Graham help? It is the start of an emotional and practical journey, which soon involves Joe as the sole confidant Graham dare trust.

Breslin has a great deal of background to communicate to uninitiated young readers and occasionally her characters become mere mouthpieces for information. However she is adroit both at convincingly inhabiting the minds of two football-mad teenagers and at deploying the game as metaphor. She dedicates Divided City to Glasgow and the city is a living presence in this complex, honourable book, which explores the historic roots of its characters’ loyalties and beliefs. The very fabric of the buildings, the city’s churches, statues and museum paintings are all emblematic of the events which have shaped the 21st-century characters’ lives.