To ask if you know this book?

[Anonynony]

I read this as a teenager and I just can't think of the name!

It was about a girl with blue hair from the uk, she was a bit wild and got a job doing make up on corpses in a funeral parlor and at one point ran away to Ireland.

It's really bugging me!

The make up on corpses is making me think Oranges are not the only Fruit but I don't remember blue hair or Ireland.

Still, that's two of us bugged about it.

Result!

Yeah, made me think about Oranges too. But don't recall blue hair or anything about Ireland... although I think the girl in it does kind of run away?

No idea, but it sounds good

Thanks for the replies, it's actually been driving me mad for years!

It's not the Oranges one.

It's pretty gritty from what I remember but really funny (though I was a teen), she was a kind of wild teen if I remember correctly and I definitely remember her wearing loads of make up and maybe blue mascara not blue hair!
It sounds really silly but it actually struck a cord with me and I think there was a second book that followed her life in Ireland!

What's the cover like? Any other details?

Roughly what year did you read it?

Did you read it for school or fun? Or both?!

I read it for fun, it definitely wouldn't be suitable for school.
I was about 16 so about ten years ago I read it and it seemed very up date at the time but I really can't be sure. I can't remember the cover at all

This is a brilliant site to post when you can't find an old book you remember: whatwasthatbook.livejournal.com/ they've always been able to answer my questions

Oh no! I've read this book too, and now I can't remember what it's called! Are there nuns involved? I have a vague memory that it was by a female writer, quite a bit of it was in dialect, and that she wrote another book after, which I also read and liked a lot. Around 2000 or so?

Sounds like something Maeve Binchy might write...

did she hide in an old church at one point when she ran away?

Oh my God I think she might have hidden in an old church!! Not sure about nuns but it rings bells.

I don't think it was particularly well known. Agh, I need to know!

It wasn't the madolescents was it?

IT WAS!!!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you

I loved that book when I was younger, never knew there was a sequel though, I'll have to see if the library has it.

Oh you've made my day whitepud! I'm heading away and for some bizarre reason I really wanted to get my hands on this book!

Let the hunt commence, thank you so much!

Aw, love a happy ending!

There was a book I read in about 1972 about a girl who digs up some poetry in a can that her dad? Grandad? Buried in the war.

It's haunted me for years and now I'm off to that site to waste the entire Bank Holiday look.