Roddy Doyle

"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...

"Jimmy Rabbitte of The Commitments returns in the triumphant new novel from the Booker Prize-winning author The distinct wit and lively, authentic dialogue that are the hallmarks of Roddy Doyle's fiction are on a full display as he reintroduces Jimmy Rabbitte in this follow-up to his beloved debut novel The Commitments. In the 1980s Jimmy Rabbitte formed the Commitments, a ragtag, blue-collar collective of Irish youths determined to bring the soul...

Life as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old Irish boy, Patrick Clarke, is a poignant voyage through a bewildering, ever-changing world of family, friends, dreams, and growing up.

A group of working-class Irish youths with a passion for the music of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding form a rock 'n' roll band and attempt to bring soul to Dublin.

Paula Spencer begins on the eve of Paula's forty-eighth birthday. She hasn't had a drink for four months and five days. Having outlived an abusive husband and father, Paula and her four children are now struggling to live their adult lives, with two of the kids balancing their own addictions. Paula rebuilds her life slowly. As she goes about her daily routine working as a cleaning woman, and cooking for her two children at home, she re-establishes

...

After being saved from death by none other than Henry Fonda and engaging in a brief but ill-fated collaboration with legendary director John Ford, Irish rebel Henry Smart ends up settling 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 widow O'Kelly (who may be his long-disappeared wife). But a political bombing in Dublin in 1974 puts him in the spotlight, and suddenly the secret...

A collection of eight stories with a common thread: someone who lives in Ireland meets someone who has come to live there.

The Outlaws plan a day of non-stop adventure. The only problem is that William is meant to be babysitting. But William won't let that stop him having fun with his gang - he'll just bring the baby along! There is only one William. This tousle-headed, snub-nosed, hearty, loveable imp of mischief has been harassing his unfortunate family and delighting his hundreds of thousands of admirers since 1922.

"Jimmy Rabbitte Sr. is unemployed, spending his days alone and miserable. When his best friend, Bimbo, also gets laid off, they keep busy by being miserable together. Things seem to look up when they buy a decrepit fish-and-chip van and go into business, selling cheap grub to the drunk and the hungry, and keeping one step ahead of the environmental health officers."

Doyle's comic novels, The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van, depict the daily life and times of the Rabbitte family in working-class Dublin.