Snappy

Advantages: Funny, observant, well written
Disadvantages: None

...Hello there you mad eejits, this is KingHerrod coming to you live all over the Ciao community, broadcasting the latest news and reviews on all that is good and all that is not so good. So listen up you eejit people to what is coming at you live and unabridged (until the sensors get at it that is). Yes, we are back with Roddy Doyle and the second book in the Barrytown trilogy, the Snapper. Our dear Jimmy Rabbittee Jr is now trying to be a DJ, having dispensed with the Irish Soul band (see the Commitments review, the first Barrytown novel) and all that nonsense and the type of Gibberish in my first paragraph, is what the Rabbittee family have to listen to thumping down from the ceiling. Yes it is another Roddy Doyle review as you may have guessed I am into this author at the moment and for good reasons, but here is a rundown...

KingHerrod 19.03.2001 · Read review
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Review of The Snapper - Roddy Doyle

Oi, give me my cod back

Advantages: See review
Disadvantages: None

...“Oi, you eejits, what are you putting you van there for!” Shouts King Herrod on the Dublin shore. “I’m telling you two eeejits, if you do not get that van out of there now, I am calling the guards!” He shouts again. “Agh, **** off, yis ****, we’re getting a pint now.” Is the reply from two narked looking Irish blokes. Now if you want to know why this imaginary conversation is taking place, then I suggest you read Roddy Doyle’s final book in the Barrytown trilogy, The Van. For those that are new to this area and my reviews, Barrytown is a fictional location in Dublin, where Roddy Doyle has based his three-part story about a working class Irish family (the Rabbittees) and the trials and tribulations of being poor in working class Ireland. The previous two books being...

KingHerrod 29.03.2001 · Read review
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Review of The Van - Roddy Doyle

Maeve Binchy meets Roddy Doyle in heartwarming story

Advantages: Heartwarming Irish novel, well-written
Disadvantages: Second half rather disappointing

...Big Fat Love is an Irish novel in a territory familiar to fans of Maeve Binchy and Roddy Doyle. And it's almost ( but not quite) as good as either of these more famous Irish writers . Author Peter Sheridan has written plays and memoirs and this book, published by Pan in 2003, was his first novel. It revolves around the larger-than-life Philo, victim of a wifebeating drunk of a husband, struggling to feed five kids, and coping with a serious weight problem. At an all-time low, and penniless, she abandons her children to an orphanage, leaves her alcoholic husband and knocks on the door of a Dublin convent seeking help. Swearing and smoking like a trooper, she charms the nuns into giving her somewhere to stay - and begins to turn her life around. The book has many strengths. Chiefly invested in Philo...

bookaddict 04.08.2009 · Read review
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Review of Big Fat Love - Peter Sheridan

Soul Man

Advantages: Funny, observant
Disadvantages: Ecclectic style

...Get away with you, you mad eeejit, an Irish soul band, no little whistle, no fiddle, no diddly dee music, you must be mad. Give me some diddly dee music and that nice Irish lass, jigging up and down with her arms stapled to her sides. Ohhh, painful, no not the staples, but that soul racket. Yes this is the subject of Irish writer Roddy Doyle’s first novel, called the Commitments, an Irish Soul band and yes of course Alan Parker made it into a classic movie of the same name. Plot The book is centred in Dublin’s working class district, Barrytown (I do not know whether Barrytown is a fictional location or not) and focuses on the formation and dissolution of an Irish band to bring soul to the people of Ireland, named the Commitments. The founder of the band is a Jimmy Rabittee, who is to his friends the fountain...

KingHerrod 07.03.2001 · Read review
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Review of The Committments - Roddy Doyle

Fresh music in a fresh style!

Advantages: Very realistic and well-formed characters
Disadvantages: Topic can become slightly uniteresting after prolonged reading

...This is a captivating tale of a group of young Irish music enthusiasts that want to start a band and hope to shoot to fame. The story details the trials and tribulations of the journey to success and the troubles success can bring for different people. Roddy Doyle creates well-built characters that have different levels that develop with the interaction of the characters and the development of the plot. The writing style creates an enthusiasm in you to read till the end and the end provides a very satisfying feeling of completion....

fkeay 20.09.2000 · Read review
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Review of The Committments - Roddy Doyle

Halfway Between The Gutter and the Stars

Advantages: Superb evocation of Ireland 1900-1930
Disadvantages: I found it hard going at times but worth it in the end

...I'm currently going through a "slow reading" period, which means I take ages to read books, that normally I'm through in a few days. I found this heavy going, though I'm not sure if my own lethargy contributed to it. Roddy Doyle has a find command of language and this book is almost Dickensian in the way it evokes the life of young Henry Smart in the first three decades of last century. The narrative precedes the birth of Henry (not the Star of the title, I may add) with the story of how his mother and father met and detailed descriptions , of their lives, jobs, acquaintances leading up to Henry's birth. This is followed by Henry's childhood , and his eventual enlistment in the IRA, with an insight into the formation of that organization and the upprisings that led to the current partitioned state of Ireland today. This part...

mikeydred 04.03.2001 · Read review
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Review of A Star Called Henry - Roddy Doyle

Irish Stew

Advantages: Insightful, educational and exciting.
Disadvantages: None.

...In his depiction of working class poverty, Roddy Doyle is fast becoming Ireland’s George Orwell. Charles Dickens’ portrayal of slum London was written over a hundred years ago, and descriptive as it is, it has lost some of its power by being too far removed from our own lives. Only Orwell and, perhaps, Alan Sillitoe have managed more recently to show the sheer banality of deprivation. Now we have Doyle, winner of the Booker Prize in 1993, for his humorous work, ‘Paddy Clark Ha, Ha, Ha; showing a much harder edge to his fiction. ‘A Star Called Henry’ is a brutal story of poverty, violence, betrayal and oppression. Henry Smart is born in the slums of turn of the century Dublin. His father is a one-legged bouncer at a brothel who turns to paid murder, and disappears one night to be presumed dead. His...

baddog 06.08.2001 · Read review
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Review of A Star Called Henry - Roddy Doyle

A "Flake" in the Fridge

Advantages: Brilliantly told
Disadvantages: The truth of it

...as to whether an author can authentically capture the voice of the opposite gender. Roddy Doyle proves unmistakeably that they can. Had "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors" been published under a female pseudonym as part of the ongoing spate of my-horror-life revelatory biographies, it would have sunk without trace - the tale is too ordinary, too recurrent to merit special attention - but it would not have raised doubts about its authenticity. As a novel that ordinariness is its strength. It tells an ordinary tale, vividly enough to make us think about it. You cannot help but feel for Paula and her family - to be exasperated by them, but also grudgingly to admire them. The story is told with such painful honesty and such insight not only into womanhood, but into childish girlhood, that for it to have been written by a man is...

hiker 29.12.2006 · Read review
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Review of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors - Roddy Doyle

Gorgeous

Advantages: funny touching memorabelia
Disadvantages: A few too many Irish references (can't help that)

...I didn't actually read this I heard it.... I loaned the audio book from the library and it is superb. Aiden Gillan reads the story (what a voice!!) of Paddy Clarke growing up (in 50-60's Ireland) and coping with life. To beging with he hates his brother and performs all those horrible rituals every younger sibling has had to endure, he loves George Best, he wants to be a priest. The narrative jumps all over the place with random interjections of wisdom spinning off tangents, which can be annoying. The book grows with Paddy as his attitudes change to almost everything including Sinbad (his brother), this is driven by the fact his Da and Ma are always arguing. There are way too many things in his antics which remind me of my past (surely Roddy Doyle did most of this himself). The overall result is a very touching very sweet...

DiazX 23.10.2000 · Read review
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Review of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle

Ha Ha Ha the Whole Way Through

Advantages: Takes you back
Disadvantages: Hard to put down

...One of the wittiest and sharpest books I have read this year has to be "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" by Roddy Doyle. In his Barrytown trilogy (The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van), Roddy Doyle brilliantly explored family life through various members of the Rabbite family. These three novels combined comedy and sadness to such effect that they established the author as a major new talent. In "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" Doyle maintains the Barrytown/Dublin setting but focuses on a different family, and the narrative point of view is changed to a boy of ten - Paddy Clarke - growing up fast and discovering new aspects of childhood as each day passes. Paddy Clarke has a realism which helps to explain Doyle's success. Through this realism the reader can rediscover some of the forgotten tragic and comic areas of childhood. "Paddy Clarke Ha...

GodsLittleAngel 23.10.2001 · Read review
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Review of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle