Books by Roddy Doyle
A Star Called Henry: A Novel (The Last Roundup)
by Roddy Doyle
Roddy Doyle’s acclaimed novel about an intrepid Irishman’s years of reckless heroism and adventure – “An extraordinarily entertaining epic.” (The Washington Post)
Born at the beginning of the twentieth century, Henry Smart lives through the evolution of modern Ireland, and in this extraordinary novel he brilliantly tells his story. From his own birth and childhood on the streets of Dublin to his role as soldier (and lover) in the Irish Rebellion, Henry recounts his early years of reckless heroism and adventure. At once an epic, a love story, and a portrait of Irish history, A Star Called Henry is a grand picaresque novel brimming with both poignant moments and comic ones, and told in a voice that is both quintessentially Irish and inimitably Roddy Doyle's.
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Oh, Play That Thing (Volume 2 of The Last Roundup)
by Roddy Doyle
A sequel to A Star Called Henry finds ex-IRA assassin Henry, having assumed an American identity, journeying between Chicago and New York in his pursuit of his elusive wife and his love for jazz, all the while endeavoring to outmaneuver the death warrant that has followed him across the Atlantic. 125,000 first printing.
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Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
by Roddy Doyle
Winner of the Booker Prize – Roddy Doyle’s witty, exuberant novel about a young boy trying to make sense of his changing world
It is 1968. Patrick Clarke is ten. He loves Geronimo, the Three Stooges, and the smell of his hot water bottle. He can't stand his little brother Sinbad. His best friend is Kevin, and their names are all over Barrytown, written with sticks in wet cement. They play football, lepers, and jumping to the bottom of the sea. But why didn't anyone help him when Charles Leavy had been going to kill him? Why do his ma and da argue so much, but act like everything is fine? Paddy sees everything, but he understands less and less. Hilarious and poignant, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha charts the triumphs, indignities, and bewilderment of a young boy and his world, a place full of warmth, cruelty, confusion and love.
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$24.00
The Woman Who Walked into Doors: A Novel (A Paula Spencer Novel)
by Roddy Doyle
"This unflinching novel chronicles a woman's relationship with a violent man in a way that brings fresh insight to the subject . . . engaging and uplifting." —O, The Oprah Magazine
From the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, the heartrending story of a brave and tenacious housewife
Paula Spencer is a thirty-nine-year-old working-class woman struggling to reclaim her dignity after marriage to an abusive husband and a worsening drinking problem. Paula recalls her contented childhood, the audacity she learned as a teenager, the exhilaration of her romance with Charlo, and the marriage to him that left her feeling powerless. Capturing both her vulnerability and her strength, Roddy Doyle gives Paula a voice that is real and unforgettable.
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A Star Called Henry (The Last Roundup, Vol. 1)
by Roddy Doyle
Born at the beginning of the twentieth century, Henry Smart lives through the evolution of modern Ireland, and in this extraordinary novel he brilliantly tells his story. From his own birth and childhood on the streets of Dublin to his role as soldier (and lover) in the Irish Rebellion, Henry recounts his early years of reckless heroism and adventure.
At once an epic, a love story, and a portrait of Irish history, A Star Called Henry is a grand picaresque novel brimming with both poignant moments and comic ones, and told in a voice that is both quintessentially Irish and inimitably Roddy Doyle's.
A New York Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday, New York Post, and Independent bestseller
A Star Called Henry--one of only four works of fiction--was chosen by the editor's of The New York Times Book Review as one of the eleven Best Books of the Year
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Publishers Weekly, Esquire, Newsday, Miami Herald, Seattle Times, and The Atlanta Journal Constitution
An American Library Association Notable Book
Nominated for Best Fiction of 1999, the New Yorker Book Awards
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Oh, Play That Thing: A Novel (The Last Roundup)
by Roddy Doyle
The sequel to Roddy Doyle’s beloved novel A Star Called Henry – an entertaining romp across America in the 1920s
Fleeing the Irish Republican paymasters for whom he committed murder and mayhem, Henry Smart has left his wife and infant daughter in Dublin and is off to start a new life. When he lands in America, it is 1924 and New York City is the center of the universe. Henry turns to hawking cheap hooch on the Lower East Side, only to catch the attention of the mobsters who run the district. In Chicago, Henry finds a newer America alive with wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. But in a city also owned by the mob, Armstrong is a prisoner of his color. He needs a man--a white man--and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.
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The Dead Republic: A Novel (The Last Roundup)
by Roddy Doyle
The triumphant conclusion to the trilogy that began with A Star Called Henry
Henry Smart is back. It is 1946, and Henry has crawled into the desert of Utah's Monument Valley to die. He's stumbled onto a film set though, and ends up in Hollywood collaborating with John Ford on a script based on his life. Eventually, Henry finds himself back in Ireland, where he becomes a custodian, and meets up with a woman who may or may not be his long-lost wife. After being injured in a political bombing in Dublin, the secret of his rebel past comes out, and Henry is a national hero. Or are his troubles just beginning? Raucous, colorful, and epic, The Dead Republic is the magnificent final act in the life of one of Doyle's most unforgettable characters.
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Bullfighting: Stories
by Roddy Doyle
A second collection of stories from the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Roddy Doyle has won acclaim for his wry wit, his uncanny ear, and his remarkable ability to fully capture the voices and hearts of his characters. Bullfighting, his second collection of stories, offers a series of bittersweet takes on men and middle age, revealing a panorama of Ireland today. Moving from classrooms to graveyards, from local pubs to bullrings, these tales of taking stock and reliving past glories feature men concerned with loss—of their place in the world, of their power, virility, health, and ability to love.
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Bullfighting: Stories
by Roddy Doyle
The Man Booker Prize-winning author takes the pulse of modern Ireland with a masterful new collection of stories.
Roddy Doyle has earned a devoted following for his wry wit, his uncanny ear, and his ability to fully capture the hearts of his characters. Bullfighting, his second collection of stories, offers a series of bittersweet takes on men and middle-age, revealing a panorama of Ireland today. Moving from classrooms to local pubs to bullrings, these tales feature an array of men taking stock and reliving past glories, each concerned with loss in different ways-of their place in the world, of their power, their virility, health, and love. "Recuperation" follows a man as he sets off on his daily prescribed walk around his neighborhood, the sights triggering recollections of his family and his younger days. In "Animals", George recalls caring for his children's many pets and his heartfelt effort to spare them grief when they died or disappeared. The title story captures the mixture of bravado and helplessness of four friends who go off to Spain on holiday. Sharply observed, funny, and moving, these thirteen stories present a new vision of contemporary Ireland, of its woes and triumphs, and middle- aged men trying to break out of the routines of their lives.
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The Guts: A Novel
by Roddy Doyle
Jimmy Rabbitte of The Commitments returns in the triumphant new novel from the Booker Prize–winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Watch for Roddy Doyle’s new novel, Smile, coming in October of 2017
Full of the great joy in storytelling that characterizes Roddy Doyle’s novels, The Guts catches up with Jimmy Rabbitte—the man who in the 1980s formed the Commitments, a band composed of working-class Irish youths whose mission was to bring soul music to Dublin. Jimmy is now
forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids . . . and colon cancer. The news leaves him shattered and frightened—he isn’t dying, he thinks, but he might be. As he battles his illness while running a small music business, he runs into former bandmates, reunites with his brother, and decides to live more in the moment. The Guts is a warm, funny novel about friendship and family, about facing death and opting for life.
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Paula Spencer: A Novel (A Paula Spencer Novel)
by Roddy Doyle
"An extraordinary story about an ordinary life." --People
"Brilliant" -- The New Yorker
Ten years on from The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Booker Prize-winning author, Roddy Doyle, returns to one of his greatest characters, Paula Spencer.
Paula Spencer is turning forty-eight, and hasn’t had a drink for four months and five days. Her youngest children, Jack and Leanne, are still living with her. They're grand kids, but she worries about Leanne.
Paula still works as a cleaner, but all the others doing the job seem to come from Eastern Europe. You can get a cappuccino in the café and the checkout girls are all Nigerian. Ireland is certainly changing, but then so too is Paula – dry, and determined to put her family back together again. Told with the unmistakable wit of Doyle's unique voice, this is a redemptive tale about a brave and tenacious woman.
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The Deportees: and Other Stories
by Roddy Doyle
Stories that take a new slant on the immigrant experience, from the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Roddy Doyle has earned a devoted following amongst those who appreciate his sly humor, acute ear for dialogue, and deeply human portraits of contemporary Ireland. The Deportees is Doyle's first-ever collection of short stories, and each tale describes the cultural collision-often funny and always poignant-between a native and someone new to the fast-changing country. From a nine-year- old African boy's first day at school to a man who's devised a test for "Irishness"to the return of The Commitments's Jimmy Rabbitte and the debut of his new multicultural band, Doyle offers his signature take on the immigrant experience in a volume reminiscent of his beloved early novels.
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The Deportees: and Other Stories
by Roddy Doyle
A first collection of short works by the author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha depicts the immigrant experience in contemporary Ireland as reflected in the stories of a father who confronts his prejudices when his daughter brings home a black man, a nine-year-old African boy's first day in a new school, and a nanny who plots against her charge's older sisters.
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Rover Saves Christmas
by Roddy Doyle
Roddy Doyle's fabulous sequel to the New York Times best seller THE GIGGLER TREATMENT . . . now in paperback!
Rudolph the reindeer is being a pain. He only has to work one day a year and what does he do? He calls in sick! Enter Rover, the only dog with the smarts, talent, good looks, and charms to be a sub.
Rover's about to take Santa on the ride of his life -- and readers get to come along.
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Click
by Gregory Maguire, Roddy Doyle, Ruth Ozeki, Eoin Colfer, Linda Sue Park, Deborah Ellis, Nick Hornby, Tim Wynne-Jones, David Almond, Margo Langan
Eoin Colfer, Nick Hornby, Roddy Doyle, Linda Sue Park, David Almond -- top authors team up to tell the story of a man who magically connects the lives and times of young people around the world.
A video message from a dead person. A larcenous teenager. A man who can stick his left toe behind his head and in his ear. An epileptic girl seeking answers in a fairy tale. A boy who loses everything in World War II, and his brother who loses even more. And a family with a secret so big that it changes everything.
The world's best beloved authors each contribute a chapter in the life of the mysterious George "Gee" Keane, photographer, soldier, adventurer and enigma. Under different pens, a startling portrait emerges of a man, his family, and his gloriously complicated tangle of a life.
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Wilderness
by Roddy Doyle
One part family drama, one part action-adventure; this is the children's novel we've been waiting for from Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle!
A novel of mothers lost and found. Grainne's Mom disappeared years ago when her parents were divorced, and Mom moved to the U.S. Now, bafflingly, she's reappeared and wants to meet. What could she be up to?
To get out of the way of this mysterious reunion, Grainne's half-brothers, Johnny and Tom, go with their mother, Sandra, on an "adventure holiday" in Finland. But before they're more than a few days into the snowy north, the boys are separated from Sandra, taking impossible risks to save her life. WILDERNESS is part-adventure, part-family drama with a charm that's all Roddy.
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The Meanwhile Adventures
by Roddy Doyle
The triumphant finale to Roddy Doyle's hilarious Mack Family tales, released in the same season as his sequel to A STAR CALLED HENRY, his best-selling book for adults.
Mr. Mack’s been arrested for a small misunderstanding at the bank (involving a saw inconveniently shaped like a machine gun.) Billie Jean Fleetwood-Mack has disappeared (off on an attempt to become the first woman to circle the globe without telling anyone.) So it’s up to the Mack kids Jimmy, Robbie and Kayla (and Rover the jaded wonder-dog) to save their family and the world from bullying prison guards, nasty orphan catchers and an army of ill-mannered slugs.
As funny as THE GIGGLER TREATMENT, as snarky as ROVER SAVES CHRISTMAS, and as brilliant as only Roddy Doyle can be.
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Life Without Children: Stories
by Roddy Doyle
“[Doyle] imparts a sense of poignancy and glimpses of happiness, of grief and loss and small moments of connection . . . you’re left feeling close to dazzled.” —Daphne Merkin, New York Times Book Review
A brilliantly warm and witty portrait of our pandemic lives, told in ten heartrending short stories, from the Booker Prize–winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief. Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown, it changes us alone.
In these ten beautifully moving short stories written mostly over the last year, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of our strange times. A man abroad wanders the stag-and-hen-strewn streets of Newcastle, as news of the virus at home asks him to question his next move. An exhausted nurse struggles to let go, having lost a much-loved patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mother’s funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret.
Told with Doyle’s signature warmth, wit, and extraordinary eye for the richness that underpins the quiet of our lives, Life Without Children cuts to the heart of how we are all navigating loss, loneliness, and the shifting of history underneath our feet.
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The Women Behind the Door: A Novel
by Roddy Doyle
A powerful, moving mother-daughter story filled with struggle and redemption by Booker-Prize winning author Roddy Doyle
At sixty-six, Paula Spencer—mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor—has finally started to live her life. She has a job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, her boyfriend Joe is a text away when she needs him, and her four children now have the healthy families and petty dramas that Paula could have only hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.
That is until her eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep one day. Nicola is everything Paula wasn’t—independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, a “success”—but now she is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. She has left her family and come to stay. As Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, mother and daughter must untangle past memory, trauma, and revelations to confront what they mean to each other—and who they want to be.
A timely and powerful novel of regrets, reparations, and reconciliations, The Women Behind the Door is a delicately devastating portrait of shame and the inescapable shadow it casts over families. Many readers will welcome the chance to reconnect with this strong, singular character whom we have seen in The Woman Who Walked into Doors and Paula Spencer, but all readers will be glad to have Paula in their life now.
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$29.00
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$18.00
The Dead Republic: A Novel
by Roddy Doyle
The triumphant conclusion to the trilogy that began with A Star Called Henry
Roddy Doyle's irrepressible Irish rebel Henry Smart is back-and he is not mellowing with age. Saved from death in California's Monument Valley by none other than Henry Fonda, he ends up in Hollywood collaborating with legendary director John Ford on a script based on his life. Returning to Ireland in 1951 to film The Quiet Man- which to Henry's consternation has been completely sentimentalized-he severs his relationship with Ford.
His career in film over, Henry settles into a quiet life in a village north of Dublin, where he finds work as a caretaker for a boys' school and takes up with a woman named Missus O'Kelly, whom he suspects- but is not quite sure-may be his long-lost wife, the legendary Miss O'Shea. After being injured in a political bombing in Dublin in 1974, Henry is profiled in the newspaper and suddenly the secret of his rebel past is out. Henry is a national hero. Or are his troubles just beginning?
Raucous, colorful, epic, and full of intrigue and incident, The Dead Republic is also a moving love story-the magnificent final act in the life of one of Roddy Doyle's most unforgettable characters.
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Paula Spencer
by Roddy Doyle
Picking up nearly ten years after the tale, The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Dublin widow Paula begins her fifth month of sobriety while endeavoring to raise the two children who are still at home, an endeavor during which she struggles to make ends meet, attends parent-teacher conferences, and develops a taste for rock music. 50,000 first printing.
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The Guts
by Roddy Doyle
Roddy Doyle, author of The Commitments, gives us another hilarious, yet humbling, novel. Jimmy Rabbitte, the man who formed the Commitments in the 1980's, is now 47, with a family and colon cancer. The news devastates him, but he doesn't think he's finished yet.
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Smile: A Novel
by Roddy Doyle
From the author of the Booker Prize winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, a bold, haunting novel about the uncertainty of memory and how we contend with the past.
"It's his bravest novel yet; it's also, by far, his best." -- npr.org
“The closest thing he’s written to a psychological thriller."– The New York Times Book Review
Just moved into a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s for a pint, a slow one. One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and a pink shirt comes over and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from secondary school. His name is Fitzpatrick.
Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes, too, the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers. He prompts other memories—of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame, as the man who would say the unsayable on the radio. But it’s the memories of school, and of one particular brother, that Victor cannot control and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity.
Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humor, the superb evocation of adolescence, but this is a novel unlike any he has written before. When you finish the last page you will have been challenged to reevaluate everything you think you remember so clearly.
Copies
No copies available.
Smile: A Novel
by Roddy Doyle
From the author of the Booker Prize winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, a bold, haunting novel about the uncertainty of memory and how we contend with the past.
"It's his bravest novel yet; it's also, by far, his best." -- npr.org
“The closest thing he’s written to a psychological thriller."– The New York Times Book Review
Just moved into a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s for a pint, a slow one. One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and a pink shirt comes over and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from secondary school. His name is Fitzpatrick.
Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes, too, the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers. He prompts other memories—of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame, as the man who would say the unsayable on the radio. But it’s the memories of school, and of one particular brother, that Victor cannot control and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity.
Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humor, the superb evocation of adolescence, but this is a novel unlike any he has written before. When you finish the last page you will have been challenged to reevaluate everything you think you remember so clearly.
Copies
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Tin House: Summer Reading
by Anthony Doerr, Roddy Doyle, Lydia Davis, Win McCormack, Holly MacArthur
Tin House features over 200 pages of new, high quality literature on what each author is most passionate about be it in the form of fiction, poetry, or essay regardless of fashion or timeliness. Of the four issues published per year, this, the summer issue, is the only one unrestricted by theme. With its simple yet sharp design and engaging departments covering profiles, interviews, and food and drink writing, Tin House Magazine is fast becoming one of the most popular literary magazines available.
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A Greyhound of a Girl
by Roddy Doyle
Mary O’Hara is a sharp and cheeky 12-year-old Dublin schoolgirl who is bravely facing the fact that her beloved Granny is dying. But Granny can’t let go of life, and when a mysterious young woman turns up in Mary’s street with a message for her Granny, Mary gets pulled into an unlikely adventure. The woman is the ghost of Granny’s own mother, who has come to help her daughter say good-bye to her loved ones and guide her safely out of this world. She needs the help of Mary and her mother, Scarlett, who embark on a road trip to the past. Four generations of women travel on a midnight car journey. One of them is dead, one of them is dying, one of them is driving, and one of them is just starting out.
Praise for A Greyhound of a Girl
STARRED REVIEW A warm, witty, exquisitely nuanced multigenerational story.”
Kirkus Reviews, starred review
STARRED REVIEW This elegantly constructed yet beautifully simple story, set in Ireland and spun with affection by Booker Prizewinner Doyle, will be something different for YA readers. These four lilting voices will linger long after the book is closed.”
Booklist, starred review
STARRED REVIEW
"Written mostly in dialogue, at which Doyle excels, and populated with a charming foursome of Irish women, this lovely tale is as much about overcoming the fear of death as it is about death itself."
Publishers Weekly, starred review
"In this moving and artfully structured ghost tale, four generations of Irish women come together. A big part of the pleasure here is the rhythm of the language and the contrasting voices of the generations. Any opportunity to read it aloud would be a treat."
Horn Book
"For children grieving the death of a parent or grandparent, this book provides comfort."
Library Media Connection
Award:
Capitol Choices 2013 - Noteworthy Titles for Children and Teens
Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) Choices 2013 list - Young Adult Fiction
USBBY Outstanding International Books List 2013
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Love: A Novel
From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a spellbinding symphony of passion and hatred, power and perversity, color and class that spans three generations of Black women in a fading beach town.
“A marvelous work, which enlarges our conception not only of love but of racial politics.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee, mistress: As Morrison’s protagonists stake their furious claim on Cosey’s memory and estate, using everything from intrigue to outright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny, erotic, and heartwrenching.
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$16.00
Love: A Novel
Two old friends reconnect in Dublin for a dramatic, revealing evening of drinking and storytelling in this winning new novel from the author of the Booker Prize winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
One summer's evening, two men meet up in a Dublin restaurant.
Drinking pals back in their youth, now married and with grown up children, their lives have taken seemingly similar paths. But Joe has a secret he needs to tell Davy, and Davy has a sorrow he wants to keep from Joe. Both are not the men they used to be.
Joe has left his wife and family for another woman, Jessica. Davy knows her too, or should - she was the girl of their dreams four decades earlier, the girl with the cello in George's pub. As Joe's story unfolds across Dublin - pint after pint, pub after pub - so too do the memories of what eventually drove Davy from Ireland: his first encounter with Faye, the lively woman who would become his wife; his father's somber disapproval; the pained spaces left behind when a parent dies.
As the two friends try to reconcile their versions of the past over the course of one night, Love offers a delightfully comic yet moving portrait of the many forms love can take throughout our lives.
Copies
No copies available.
Love: A Novel
Two old friends reconnect in Dublin for a dramatic, revealing evening of drinking and storytelling in this winning new novel from the author of the Booker Prize winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
One summer's evening, two men meet up in a Dublin restaurant.
Drinking pals back in their youth, now married and with grown up children, their lives have taken seemingly similar paths. But Joe has a secret he needs to tell Davy, and Davy has a sorrow he wants to keep from Joe. Both are not the men they used to be.
Joe has left his wife and family for another woman, Jessica. Davy knows her too, or should - she was the girl of their dreams four decades earlier, the girl with the cello in George's pub. As Joe's story unfolds across Dublin - pint after pint, pub after pub - so too do the memories of what eventually drove Davy from Ireland: his first encounter with Faye, the lively woman who would become his wife; his father's somber disapproval; the pained spaces left behind when a parent dies.
As the two friends try to reconcile their versions of the past over the course of one night, Love offers a delightfully comic yet moving portrait of the many forms love can take throughout our lives.
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The Barrytown Trilogy: The Commitments; The Snapper; The Van
by Roddy Doyle
A one-volume edition of the celebrated trio of novels about the Rabbitte family, from the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
The Barrytown Trilogy gathers Roddy’s Doyle’s first three novels into one volume: The Commitments, one of the funniest rock’n’roll novels ever written, about a group of aspiring musicians on a mission to bring soul to Dublin; The Snapper, about the progression of twenty-year-old Sharon Rabbitte’s pregnancy on her family; and The Van, a finalist for the Booker Prize, a tender and hilarious tale of male friendship, midlife crisis, and family life, set during the heady days of Ireland’s brief, euphoric triumphs in the 1990 World Cup.
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The Commitments
by Roddy Doyle
In the first volume of the Barrytown Trilogy, Roddy Doyle, winner of the Booker Prize for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, introduces The Commitments, a group of fame-starved, working-class Irish youths with a paradoxical passion for the music of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding and a mission—to bring Soul to Dublin. Doyle writes about the band with a fan's enthusiasm and about Dublin with a native's cheerful knowingness. His book captures all the shadings of the rock experience: ambition, greed, and egotism—ans the redeeming, exhilarating joy of making music. The Commitments is one of the most engaging and believable novels about rock'n'roll ever written, a book whose brashness and originality have won it mainstream acclaim and underground cachet.
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