Doyle: "It's not a trilogy. It's just three books." Though Doyle never intended to write a trilogy, his first three novels are so true-to-life and so representative of north Dublin that it is easy to see why they are now grouped as a "trilogy." All are set in the same blighted neighborhood, an area of overcrowded tenements, unemployment, and hardscrabble living, but also an area full of life, dreams for the future, rowdy friendships centered around the pub, and close families. Focusing on various members of the Rabbitte family, the novels show life as it is really lived here, with moments of high humor and often hilarious interactions alternating with moments of sad realization and broken dreams.
In The Commitments, Jimmy Rabbitte, Jr. forms a soul band from neighborhood musicians and singers, the band offering its members the opportunity to feel successful--at something! The Snapper concerns teenager Sharon Rabbitte, who, after a wild night at the pub, discovers she is expecting a little "snapper" by a man she loathes but will not identify. Sharon's pregnancy is a source of tension with her father, especially since there are already five other children in the family. The Van focuses on the father, Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr., now unemployed, who goes to work with his best friend Bimbo, who has bought a "chips" van for selling burgers, fish, and chips at sporting events, an experience that tests the friendship.
The dialogue throughout these novels is lightning-fast, filled with local dialect, crude profanities, witticisms, and can-you-top-this insults. In this neighborhood, survival is based on toughness and the ability to think quickly on one's feet, and the dialogue often resembles a stage play more than a novel. Characterization, which is thin in The Commitments gradually becomes more complex in later novels. The Snapper, with two main characters, becomes an intimate family drama, more emotionally moving than The Commitments. With The Van, Doyle develops into a real novelist, using dialogue to depict the complex tensions which evolve between two best friends who eventually find themselves at each other's throats.
The Rabbitte family is both individualized and symbolic of the neighborhood, and the three novels together show their need for dreams, along with their attitudes towards education, sex, factory work, and the church. We see their "escapes" from the workday, their physicality, and their amusements and humor. Here, in his Barrytown novels, Doyle shows the vibrancy of life in one blighted area and celebrates the small successes and the love which give meaning to their lives. n Mary Whipple
A telling trilogy Doyle gives us three stories of a family filled with a purity of heart, a pragmatic outlook on life, and hilarious tragedy. "The Commitments" introduces you to this close-knit family in the Barrytown suburb/slum of Northern Ireland. Many saw the movie, but as always it is nothing when compared to the book. Each story has its own appeal, but they really shine when read in conjunction with the others in the series.
excellent excellent excellent Three books in one, these are hilarious and often touching stories of the Rabbitte family. The Committments gives some family background, makes us think about what it takes and means to be a manager, and details the rise and fall of a working-class soul band. The Snapper gets a lot more serious, and is in turns very sad, infuriating and finally uplifting, with one of the Rabbitte daughters becoming a mother. The focus of the Van shifts squarely to the dad of the Rabbitte family, who goes into business with a fish and chips van, and while I had low expectations for this one, it turned out to be the funniest of the three in my opinion. Don't miss out on this collection...for the humor alone (and there is much more to these stories than just that) it is one of my favorite books of all time. I also recommend checking out the Committments on film.
extemely enjoyable Buy this, read this, sit back and enjoy. Its all here. Life in a nutshell. The only thing that bothers me, and it has nothing to do with the books, is that they couldn't use the real names of the characters in the movie version of "The Snapper". But like I said that has nothing to do with the books.
I read these all seperately, but I feel this trilogy will make a great gift idea come the holiday season.
Also check out Roddy Doyle's "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha", which also takes place in Barrytown.
Re: The Van I just belatedly read The Van (as a stand-alone book, not as part of a trilogy). Comments: 1. Excellently written. The style and page layout (lots of white space, rather than longwinded text) made it a very easy book for anyone to pick up and read, quickly and enjoyably. 2. The adventures that Jimmy Sr and Bimbo had in the van could have been made a bit more unusual and unexpected by the author, but that was a decision for the author to make. The book was fine, contents-wise, as it stood, simply concentrating on humdrum events such as the pair might have met with in real life rather than anything much more unusual. 3. The ending could have been made a bit better, I felt. The ending wasn't sufficiently long, sufficiently climactic or necessarily logical. My only real criticism was the ending. It could have been better. The book rather tailed off anti-climactically. 4. There is no 4.
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