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’.
The Snapper by Roddy Doyle
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 […]
Jaysus
The Comittments by Roddy Doyle
Did you like Sing Street? Did you find to be a little too washed over and sanitary? Is that a crazy sentence when I type it? Maybe this book is for you? When I was a kid, we had some movie we bought on VHS that had a trailer for this movie. I am a little too young to have watched it then, and for some reason, twenty-five years later I picked it up and read it straight through. So an Irish dude about town […]
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 […]