Running Home

The opening few pages of Running Home are shocking and painfully breathtaking, immediately hooking the reader into Cait and Effie’s fate as they try to reach their grandparents’ home in New Quay, Ireland. Their parents’ violent death while on holiday in Cornwall leaves them abandoned and frightened of the police and authorities, not wanting to be taken into care.

Cait is 12 and her little sister Effie is only six. Gradually, as they journey towards Birmingham and then Holyhead, a picture builds up through Cait’s thoughts and worries about the past and future: their depressed dad, their loving Mam and their generous grandparents in County Clare. Cait remains the staff for Effie to lean on, but Effie too has moments of maturity and ingenuity. Achingly, she also seems to have forgotten near the end that her parents have died, Doran reminding us in the excitement about the effects of bereavement on young children.

Running Home is Doran’s first full-length book, and it’s a stunning debut. Throughout the story she refers everything back to the children’s experiences, comparing all the strange situations they find themselves in to their previous life – what Mam would say, what Dad would complain about, how Nana and Granda would be surprised and worried. By weaving Cait and Effie’s safe home life in Ireland so tightly into their adventure she emphasises why they are running home, and Cait’s unstoppable tears when she gets to her Nana and Granda’s will be replicated on the reader’s cheeks.