Showing results by author "Roddy Doyle" in All Categories

Barrytown, Dublin, has something to sing about. The Commitments are spreading the gospel of the soul. Ably managed by Jimmy Rabitte, brilliantly coached by Joel 'The Lips' Fagan, their twin assault on Motown and Barrytown takes them by leaps and bounds from Paris Hall to immortality on vinyl. But can The Commitments live up to their name?

The final book in Roddy Doyle's highly acclaimed Barrytown Trilogy focuses on Jimmy Rabbitte Sr, who is facing the vicissitudes of unemployment when his friend Bimbo invites him to become his partner in a new venture: a fish and chip van.

The eight tales in Roddy Doyle's first-ever collection of stories have one thing in common: someone born in Ireland meets someone who has come to live there. "New Boy" describes the first day of school for a nine-year-old boy from Africa; while in "The Pram", a terrifying ghost story, a Polish nanny grows impatient with her charge's older sisters and decides - in a new phrase she has learned - to "scare them shitless".

Born in the slums of Dublin in 1901, his father a one-legged whore-house bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing, begging, often cold, always hungry, but a prince of the streets. At 14, already six-foot-two, Henry's in the General Post Office on Easter Monday 1916, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army, fighting for freedom.

Meet the Rabbitte family, a motley bunch of loveable ne'er-do-wells whose everyday purgatory is rich with hangovers, dogshit, and dirty dishes. When the older sister announces her pregnancy, the family are forced to rally together and discover the strangeness of intimacy. But the question remains: which friend of the family is the father of Sharon's child?

Meet Charlie Savage: a middle-aged Dubliner with an indefatigable wife, an exasperated daughter, a drinking buddy who’s realized that he’s been a woman all along.... Compiled here for the first time is a whole year’s worth of Roddy Doyle’s hilariousseries for the Irish Independent. Giving a unique voice to the everyday, he draws a portrait of a man - funny, loyal, somewhat bewildered - trying to keep pace with the modern world (if his knees don’t give out first)

Jimmy Rabbitte is back. The man who invented the Commitments back in the eighties is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids...and bowel cancer. He isn't dying, he thinks, but he might be. Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle - his new thing is finding old bands and then finding the people who loved them enough to pay money for their resurrected singles and albums. On his path through Dublin he meets two of the Commitments - Outspan, whose own illness is probably terminal, and Imelda Quirk, still as gorgeous as ever.

At sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor – is finally living her life. A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man – Joe – with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children, now with families and petty dramas the likes of which Paula could only have hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.

Just moved into a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly's pub for a pint, a slow one. One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and pink shirt brings over his pint and sits down. He seems to know Victor's name and to remember him from school. Says his name is Fitzpatrick. Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes too the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up.

In these 10 beautifully moving short stories, mostly written 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.

Rory and Ita, Roddy Doyle's first nonfiction book, tells, largely in their own words, the story of his parents' lives from their first memories to the present. Born in 1923 and 1925 respectively, they met at a New Year's Eve dance in 1947 and married in 1951. They remember every detail of their Dublin childhoods, the people, the politics, idyllic times in the Wexford countryside for Ita, for Rory, his apprenticeship as a printer.

At sixty-six, Paula Spencer—mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor—is finally living her life. A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man—Joe—with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children, now with families and petty dramas the likes of which Paula could only have hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside. That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, “a success”—Nicola is suddenly determined to leave it all behind.

Old friends meet up on a summer's evening at a Dublin restaurant. Both are now married with grown-up children, and their lives have taken seemingly similar paths. But Joe has a secret he has to tell Davy, and Davy, a grief he wants to keep from Joe. Both are not the men they used to be. Neither Davy nor Joe know what the night has in store, but as two pints turns to three, then five, and the men set out to revisit the haunts of their youth, the ghosts of Dublin entwine around them.

Il signor Mack stava andando alla stazione. Era una bella giornata di sole. Gli uccellini sui rami cantavano la loro canzone preferita, e spirava un'arietta piena dei profumi della prima colazione: pancetta, uova, zampe di rana e cavolo verzo. Il signor Mack fa un lavoro davvero interessante: l'assaggiatore di biscotti. Ma una mattina, sulla strada per la fabbrica di biscotti, lo aspetta un destino davvero ingrato (e puzzolente): è sul punto di sperimentare... il trattamento Ridarelli. A chi tocca il trattamento Ridarelli? Agli adulti che sono cattivi coi bambini.

Just moved in to 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 brings over his pint 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.

The men in Bullfighting are each concerned with loss in different ways - of their place in their world, of power, virility, love - of the boom days and the Celtic Tiger. ‘The stories, his memories, were wearing out’ the narrator of the title story thinks, ‘and there was nothing new replacing them.’The stories move from classrooms to graveyards, local pubs to bullrings; featuring an array of men at their working day and at rest, taking stock and reliving past glories.

Paula Spencer begins on the eve of Paula's 48th birthday. She 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.

Früher waren Davy und Joe gute Kumpels. Inzwischen treffen sie sich nur noch gelegentlich, wenn Davy aus England nach Dublin kommt, um seinen Vater zu besuchen. Es sind oberflächliche Begegnungen, sie sind erwachsen geworden, jeder hat sein eigenes Leben. Doch dieser Abend ist anders. Die beiden Männer ziehen wie früher um die Häuser, trinken ein Bier nach dem anderen, und die Gespräche werden immer vertrauter. Lange zurückgehaltene Gefühle und Konflikte drängen nach oben. Joe vertraut seinem Freund an, dass er seine Frau und seine Kinder für eine andere verlassen hat.

Früher waren Davy und Joe gute Kumpels. Inzwischen treffen sie sich nur noch gelegentlich, wenn Davy aus England nach Dublin kommt, um seinen Vater zu besuchen. Es sind oberflächliche Begegnungen, sie sind erwachsen geworden, jeder hat sein eigenes Leben. Doch dieser Abend ist anders. Die beiden Männer ziehen wie früher um die Häuser, trinken ein Bier nach dem anderen, und die Gespräche werden immer vertrauter. Lange zurückgehaltene Gefühle und Konflikte drängen nach oben. Joe vertraut seinem Freund an, dass er seine Frau und seine Kinder für eine andere verlassen hat.

La nonna è all'ospedale. Mary, sua nipote, le vuole molto bene, ma è dura per lei andarla a trovare. Durante le visite la nonna dorme quasi sempre e Mary sa che la sua vita è prossima alla fine. Un giorno, tornando da scuola, Mary incontra una donna misteriosa, dall'immagine sfuggente. Si chiama Tansey e aiuterà Mary ad accettare l'inevitabile, accompagnando lei, la madre e la nonna in un'ultima, gloriosa, avventura di mezzanotte.