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Wednesday's Child is the story of one year in the life of an Irish child protection worker. Shane Dunphy was involved in social care for fifteen years. This book is a distilling of the cases he encountered in that time to make a single, year-long narrative. Apart from that compression, and some necessary changes of identifying details, everything in the book is true.
And what a truth he reveals! Here are the cases of three dysfunctional familes, struggling at the margins of a society that barely acknowledges the existence of such people. This is a portrait of fatalistic despair, of families so sunk in chronic poverty and neglect that they are beyond saving themselves or their children. All the elements of social dysfunction are present: the unkempt houses, truant children, endless televsion, anorexia, alcoholism, suicidal desperation.
Yet out of this mess there is hope as well as tragedy. Most of Wednesday's children don't make it, but some do. Some survive the most appalling childhood horrors to make it through to the normal adult world. But more are doomed. Despite the heroism of child protection workers and the best efforts of well-intentioned people, we still face a hidden mountain of avoidable human misery. And all this in one of the richest countries in the world.
Wednesday's Child is that rare beast: a serious work of non-fiction that reads like a thriller...by turns funny, angry, touching and, ultimately, almost unbearably moving, it is a stunning achievement. John Connolly
'It is funny poignant, frightening and disturbing.' The Wexford People
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