Volume 41, Number 3 · February 3, 1994
Another Country
By Denis Donoghue
OTHER BOOKS BY RODDY DOYLE DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
by Roddy Doyle
Viking, 282 pp., $20.95
The Commitments
by Roddy Doyle
Vintage, 165 pp., $9.00 (paper)
The Snapper
by Roddy Doyle
Penguin, 216 pp., $10.00 (paper)
The Van
by Roddy Doyle
Penguin, 355 pp., $10.00 (paper)
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the Booker Prize last year. Set on the north side of Dublin in 1966, it is the story of a ten-year-old boy, Paddy Clarke, told entirely in his voice. The events he speaks of are external. He doesn't keep a diary or express feelings as they occur to him. Everything in the book has happened in school or at home, on the dreary streets of 'Barrytown' or in the fields near the Clarkes' house. Paddy tells of these episodes shortly after they have happened, with a few references to earlier ones. Mainly he reports his daily life, ordinary things. We soon come to know him through his care for father and mother, his cruelty toward his young brother Francis ('Sinbad'), bouts of mischief-making for the thrill of it, petty thefts from local shops, spurts of vandalism, soccer on the street, games, fights. We also come to sense his resilience, the freshness of his small life, the unabashed timbre of his voice. Mostly his story amounts to loss. He wants to stop his father from fighting with his mother. He tries to anticipate his father's bad moods and to divert them by telling him a story or a joke. But it is no good. In the end, his father leaves home. The schoolboys jeer at Paddy:
Review, 4081 words
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