The Van – Roddy Doyle – 4/5 Stars This is the third book of the Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle. The previous books are The Commitments and The Snapper. All three take place in a lower class neighborhood in Dublin, Ireland in the 1980s and spiral around various members of the Rabbitte family, a family who along with being desperately poor and loving, seem to have an endless number of kids coming and going. And like the difference between The Commitments and The Snapper, it’s […]
One time my friend…
One time my friend, who is a musician, wrote this album and I bought it. I listened to it a handful of times and afterward I was like…..oh no, I think he got a divorce. Because the songs were so sad and pleading and heartfelt I was worried. So some internet snooping later, it turns out I was right. I get the same feeling from this collection of stories. It’s not the saddest thing I have ever read, but it has such a motif of […]
–We’re some family all the same, wha’.
This novel is part two of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy, which starts off with The Commitments and closes with The Van. In this novel, we meet the Rabbitte family half a generation earlier from where we started in the previous novel. So to call it a sequel is right and not right and to call it a prequel is right and not right. My understanding is that the third book moves backward in this same fashion. If you liked The Commitments I am certain you’re going to like this […]
Despite its title, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is not at all funny.
I’ve been trying to go through Booker Prize winners, and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is one that I haven’t read. I’m more familiar with British writers than I am Irish, so it seemed like a logical pick. Oh, my, that book took FOREVER to read. Or seemed like it. It picked up speed towards the end, but still. It’s a bit exhausting to read into a child’s thoughts and stream-of-consciousness. That’s pretty much what the book covers–a ten-year-old child tries to navigate the world […]