The Van by Roddy Doyle

The Van by Roddy Doyle  (1991, 193 pages, book three of The Barrytown Trilogy)

The Barrytown Trilogy

Please consider participating in Irish Short Story Month-March 1 to March 31-

My Prior Posts on Roddy Doyle

The Van is the eighth novel by Roddy Doyle I have read.   Obviously I like and respect his work  a lot.    The Van is the last in a series of novels, The Barrytown Trilogy, about a working class family in Dublin, the Rabbitte family.  In the final book of the trilogy the father of the family, Vernon, and his best friend Bimbo set up a food van selling fish, chips, burgers, candy bars and a few other things.   I think this is my favorite novel of the trilogy but I really enjoyed them all.

It was so much fun to see the lads take a horrible looking van and turn it into a very much profit making food van.   There are, as we always find in a Doyle novel, lots of great conversations, lots of drinking and lots of people using the word "f**k" in various variations.    I am assuming it is normal in the setting in which this novel is written for a father to use this expression with his children but it seems a little shocking at times and would be considered appalling in the Philippines.  

Watching the food van business develop was just great fun and really pretty exciting.   I felt great when they started making strong money and worried when hooligans attacked the van out of pure meanness   Watching the interplay of the characters was a great treat and Doyle is brilliant at that.   There is still a lot of life in the Rabbitte family and I hope to read more about them one day in a future book.

The next Doyle book I hope to read is his Booker Prize Winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha.

I really hope to see the movies made from his books one day also.

I will post on his short story "Animals" during Irish Short Story Month.

Mel u

The Snapper by Roddy Doyle

The Snapper by Roddy Doyle (1992, 224 pages)

I was very happy when one of my Christmas presents was The Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle.  So far I have read six novels by Dolye including the first book in the trilogy, The Commitments.  I really like his work, obviously, and it gives me a real, I hope, feel for Ireland and the rhythms of Hiberno-English.

The Barrytown Trilogy novels deal with the lives of the members of a working class family in north Dublin, the Rabittes.  The first novel centered around the oldest son's attempt to start a band.  This one deals with the consequences for the family of the unwed pregnancy of the oldest daughter Sharon, age 20.  I am such an outsider to Irish culture that I needed Google to learn that in Irish slang, a "snapper" is what a baby is called, as in "Who is the father of that snapper you are carrying?"

The novel is told largely though conversations.  There are  three interrelated groups in The Snapper.  The first one is the Rabbitte family, father and mother, Jimmy Jr and younger children.   Of course it is a very emotional moment when Sharon tells her parents she is pregnant, made worse by her refusing to name the father.  We also have, and this was a joy to read, Sharon and her girl friends.  They go wild when they learn she is pregnant.  When she will not tell them who the father is they come up with all sorts of possibilities.  Then there are the pub friends of Jimmy Senior.  He is a little embarrassed his daughter is pregnant but he gets is a bad fight defending her.

We, though nobody else really does, learn who the father is, and is pretty shocking.   How Sharon tries to hide the father's identity is hilarious.

The ending of the novel was very warm and touching.

I really liked this novel an awful lot.  I have already started the last novel in the trilogy, The Van.

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle  (1989, 141 pages)

My Prior Posts on Roddy Doyle

If you want to learn about life of the ordinary person in Dublin, the ones who never really rode the Celtic Tiger, your best contemporary literary source for that just might be the novels of Roddy Doyle (Ireland, 1958).   I read five of his novels in 2012 and hope to read five more in 2013.

The Commitments is Doyle's first novel.  It is about a group of mostly young men from north Dublin who form a rock and roll band.  There is a quote on the back cover of the book saying it is the best ever rock and roll novel.  I have never read any other such works but I find this a very credible claim.   The story revolves around Jimmy Rabbitte Jr's progress in setting up a band.   He has a few friends who can play but he does not have every body he needs so he puts an advertisement for band members in the paper.    All sorts of people show up, including a fifty year old man who used to play with Otis Redding.   They want to have a soul band, playing the songs of Mo-Town singers likes James Brown.   Everybody in the band is  about thirty years younger than the older man, Joey the Lip and he guides them in the ways of Soul.   Jimmy also adds three girl singers to the group which adds some spice and some trouble when the lads all begin to fall for one of them.  They are all completely shocked to walk in on her and Joey the Lip in a passionate embrace.

This novel tells itself mostly through dialogue, which I really liked.   The conversations are just great.   There is a lot of alcohol consumed, some conflicts and turmoil.     Doyle really lets us see how getting started in a band in Dublin works.    He made me feel I was there in the band.   I think Joey the Lip made the novel for me!    

From the movie

The Commitments is the first novel in The Barrytown Trilogy which includes The Snapper, about the out of wedlock pregnancy of Jimmy's sister, and The Vans when we see the lads a bit older setting up a food van.  I have already started The Snapper and I really like it so far.  

The Commitments is a fast read.   I read parts of it on a long car ride and parts waiting around a government office.   It is very entertaining and the conversations, the lads do use a lot of what some would find offensive language but it seemed real to me.