Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha: Booker Prize Winner

When his novel "The Commitments" became a smash hit movie, Irish writer Roddy Doyle acquired a vast new American audience for that book and the two others (The Snapper; The Van) in his gritty and hilarious trilogy of Dublin working - or rather workless-class life. Tragedy lies just the other side of wildest laughter in Doyle's first three novels. Each is characterized by lots of colorful, streetwise dialogue, fearlessly resourceful characters and loads of ironic wit. This novel, winner of London's prestigious 1993 Booker Prize, is different. Paddy Clarke is ten in 1968 and the narrative explores what that means in an almost stream-of-consciousness fashion. Paddy and his friends stage a Viking funeral for a dead rat, run the Grand National over the neighbors' hedged gardens, set fires at building sites, rob ladies' magazines (because they were the easiest) from shops, and torment each other, forming fluid alliances and watching for weaknesses. They are funny and frightening and unaware of both. The early part of the book roams from hair-raising adventure to adventure, incorporating casual cruelties and unheeded dangers with equal aplomb. Family intrudes only as a framework, a background of sustenance and tiresome restraints. Sinbad, Paddy's younger brother, is a tag-along nuisance, tolerated primarily as a victim for experimentation, such as forcing a capsule of lighter fluid between his teeth and lighting it. Paddy is full of life and contradictions; his mind is never still and, while full of wonder, not introspective. His rich fantasy life is more likely to be cruel than kind. He's as typical as any individual can be. Then the ever-simmering tensions between his parents intensify. The mysterious fights, his mother's tears, his father's black moods, move into Paddy's life and begin to take it over. Not that Paddy abandons pick-up soccor games or schemes against the boys in the corporation houses. But he begins to see his little brother with new eyes - a person who can share the burden of fear and maybe help stop it from happening. But Sinbad is uncooperative. Too young or too-long tormented by his older brother, he refuses to even listen. Paddy is left to turn the tide by himself. He stays awake all night because if he does it will stop them fighting; he watches them and interposes himself between them, learning how to turn their anger. The last third of the book is filled with gut-wrenching uncertainty. The sense that anything can happen at any time keeps the reader on tenterhooks, no longer able to laugh but hopeful, like Paddy, that normality will return. Doyle has created a masterful portrait of a boy - a child who observes so much more than adults expect but whose understanding is skewed by being a child. Paddy Clarke is funny, exuberant, unpredictable, subtle and heartbreaking.

Paddy Clarke and his friends grow up in an Irish town called Barrytown. Their games and fun and carefree life is pretty much the story. But what is amazing is how beautifully and authentically the child-mind is pictured. The catch is when you are a child you would probably not be able to enjoy or write such a story and when you have grown up you have lost touch with the child-mind. Roddy Doyle is remarkable in overcoming this and he makes it look so simple. Little sentences and sentiments that make you re-live your childhood. The end is sad but the way a child feels sad without knowing much about the adult world is definitely a fresh read.

Given how many people use a shrink to restore childhood memories, the success of this book remains astounding. It is utterly timeless in conveying all we went through at one level or another in those ancient days. Reading this book is an indication of why many of us have quashed those images - the cost of painful recall is often too great to bear. How much did Doyle pay in order to dredge it all up again and present these recollections for our delighted reading? Whether this account is autobiographical is of no matter - what Doyle expresses gives voice to many wishing to be heard. If some would only listen!Those who discern little plot in this book should reflect on their own lives. Can you trace the steps leading to now from when you were 10 years old? It may seem easy now. Doyle superbly expresses the complexity of a boy's life. Elders view it with simple minds. Paddy must balance life with his family with that of his gang, his teachers, learning about himself against conflicting views of others. Kids don't have it as easy as we like to think. Parents devised the ignorant dictum that 'children should be seen but not heard' with the result that boys like Paddy expend immense amounts of energy forging an identity for themselves.Reviewers here make much of the Irish city setting of this book. Bosh! Urban, rural, Eire, Canada, Germany - all could find in children's lives a compelling topic. The locale is meaningful in the expressions Doyle uses to impart his ideas. There's merit in contending that only an Irish writer could do this tale full justice. Doyle's tale is a cry from the heart, a characteristic many attribute to a Gaelic inheritance. No matter, Paddy's story is truly universal. Every parent should read it carefully. Every bookshelf should contain a copy.

I had, at the age of thirty five years, forgotten quite a lot - if not most - of what it meant to be ten years old.I have no idea how Roddy Doyle managed this incredible book - how he captured the wonder, the pain, the self-importance of being a child - but he did, I'm glad for it.If you can't remember the wonder, the adventure, the all-engrossing pain of being a child, you should pick up this book.

By far one of the best books I have ever read, Roddy Doyle really takes you into the mind of Paddy Clarke, a young boy growing up in Barrytown in the 1960s. As we get older, we often forget how the world looks to young people, and Doyle has taken us back to relive it. All the doubts, fears, fun and games are there -- and the result of Doyle's prose and heartfelt descriptions of life for a ten-year-old whose world is falling apart is nothing short of magic. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone