book review a star called henry

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

A STAR CALLED HENRY

by Roddy Doyle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1999

Absolutely extraordinary. Readers who thought Doyle had outdone himself with the deftly juxtaposed comedy and drama in his...

            The much-loved Irish author ( The Woman Who Walked Into Doors , 1996, etc.) breaks impressive new ground with this masterly portrayal of the making of an IRA terrorist – the first volume of a projected trilogy entitled The Last Roundup.

            In the vigorous colloquial voice that has become Doyle’s trademark, Henry Smart (b.  1901) narrates the fractious events of his 20 years, beginning with the unlikely courtship of his teenaged mother, (the ironically named) Melody Nash, by Henry’s father and namesake, a one-legged boozer who works as a bouncer (and hired killer) for Dublin madam Dolly Oblong and unseen criminal impresario Alfie Gandon.  In a lustily detailed story of want and woe that easily outdistances Angela’s Ashes , Henry Sr. is betrayed to the police, Melody lapses into premature senility, and five-year-old Henry, accompanied by younger brother Victor, becomes a resourceful “street arab.”  A handsome, strapping lad who learns quickly and adapts easily to violently shifting circumstances, Henry survives and, in a way, prospers – as a member of the ragtag “Irish Citizen Army” (during the vividly described Easter Monday 1916 cataclysm), a dockworker, the precocious lover of many women (including his teacher, later his wife, the fiery nationalist he will know only as “Miss O’Shea”), and IRA gunman and murderer and a trusted protégé of Michael Collins, and – in the stunning climactic pages – his father’s avenger.  Throughout, Doyle manages the virtually impossible feat of mingling Ireland’s dark and bloody early modern history with his brilliantly imagined protagonist’s own amazing story:  never for a moment do we feel we’re being given a history lesson, nor does Henry’s forthright amorality relax its firm hold on us.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-670-88757-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1999

HISTORICAL FICTION

Share your opinion of this book

More by Roddy Doyle

BOOK REVIEW

by Roddy Doyle

THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring  passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the  Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

More by Kristin Hannah

by Kristin Hannah

More About This Book

BOOK TO SCREEN

SEEN & HEARD

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Google Rating

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2014

New York Times Bestseller

National Book Award Finalist

Pulitzer Prize Winner

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

by Anthony Doerr ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2014

Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.

Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.

In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.

Pub Date: May 6, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

More by Anthony Doerr

by Anthony Doerr

edited by Anthony Doerr & Heidi Pitlor

PERSPECTIVES

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

September 12, 1999 Unrest Was General All Over Ireland Roddy Doyle rages against history in this novel set during the Easter Rebellion. Related Links First Chapter: 'A Star Called Henry' Richard Bernstein Reviews 'A Star Called Henry' (Sept. 10) By RICHARD EDER A STAR CALLED HENRY Volume 1 of ''The Last Roundup.'' By Roddy Doyle. 343 pp. New York: Viking. $24.95. oddy Doyle, buoyantly astringent chronicler of the urban Irish poor, has written an epic of revising anger about Ireland's national legend. Melding Joyce's ''old sow that eats her farrow'' with the classic phrase about revolutions devouring their offspring, he comes up with an independence struggle that grows its children for food right from the start, trumpets a belch and gets fat. ''A Star Called Henry'' is the most ambitious and wide-ranging work yet by the author of the remarkable ''Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha,'' ''The Woman Who Walked Into Doors,'' ''The Commitments'' and others. These were large books drawn on narrow circumstances. Doyle has been a Gorky of the Dublin lower depths -- funnier and not much less adept in writing of slum ugliness with an odd beauty that doesn't lift it but us. The new novel takes the form of a scouring journey through history by Henry Smart, its narrator and protagonist. Born in atrocious poverty at the start of the century, he makes a child's rough way in the streets, joins the nationalist uprising at 14, serves as a gunman under Michael Collins and becomes marked for elimination by his own leaders. About to negotiate the 1921 truce and Free State, they judge him a dangerously hard man, likely to fight along with the rejectionists in the looming civil war. Dangerous Henry is, but the opposite of hard. His war already lost to disillusion, he skips off for England and the coming volumes of what is planned as a trilogy. So much for misleading summary. ''A Star Called Henry'' is not a historical novel in any usual sense of the term. Doyle uses history, sometimes splendidly, but he has no use for it. He rages against it with an energy that spins the smart machineries of the writing, and occasionally seizes them up. History (as Peter Lorre said of time in ''Beat the Devil'') is a crook. It is on the side of the big battalions, and the little ones that overthrow them and then swell. What are its causes and lost causes to people too mired in poverty and struggle to afford them -- yet fated to be used by them? As the start of a multivolume work, ''The Last Roundup,'' ''Star'' is still being born and not entirely out from placental intention and into its own defining life. It does not altogether settle in the judgment, apart from the obvious one: that it is big, greedy and a prodigy. In many respects it magnificently masters the reader; one respect still held out is whether it will come to master itself. ''Star'' brilliantly depicts the worlds through which Henry moves: the first, the near-medieval hardship of his scrabbling Dublin childhood; the second, the dramatic and ethical complexity of his armed service under Michael Collins. Then there is Henry himself: not what he sees and does but what he is. Doyle balloons him from grit-sharp, fiery-tongued picaresque into a mythic Everyman hero. The balloon flies and leaks. The first 80 pages have the compression and expansion of a nova. Doyle has distilled his distinctive exploration of life, wit and rage in the Dublin slums; they are set out in the dark and flaming colors of an urban Bruegel. Henry, ''pale and red-eyed, held together by rashes and sores . . . a stomach crying to be filled, bare feet aching like an old, old man's,'' sits on the stoop beside Melody, his mother, withered and decomposing at 20. She points up to a star: ''There's my little Henry up there. Look it.'' BOOK EXCERPT "She walked into my father. Melody Nash met Henry Smart. She walked right into him, and he fell. She was half his weight, half his height, six years younger but he fell straight over like a cut tree. Love at first sight? Felled by her beauty? No. He was maggoty drunk and missing his leg. He was holding himself up with a number seven shovel he'd found inside an open door somewhere back the way he'd come when Melody Nash walked into him and dropped him onto Dorset Street. It was a Sunday. She was coming from half-eight mass, he was struggling out of Saturday. Missing a leg and his sense of direction, he hit the street with his forehead and lay still. Melody dropped the beads she'd made herself and stared down at the man. She couldn't see his face; it was kissing the street. She saw a huge back, a back as big as a bed, inside a coat as old and crusted as the cobbles around it. Shovel-sized hands at the end of his outstretched arms, and one leg. Just the one. She actually lifted the coat to check. "-- Where's your leg gone, mister? said Melody." -- from the first chapter of 'A Star Called Henry' He was the first of her dead babies, followed by Gracie, Lil, two Victors and others, all ''stars'' needed by God -- so No. 2 Henry angrily tells us -- to light the night.'' Those remaining were ''the ugly ones, the noisy ones, the ones He didn't want -- the ones that would never stay fed.'' Cursing the darkness is the only possible candle for Doyle's poor, once their few wax-ends of gaiety are used up. He writes the wax-ends as well, notably Melody's comic encounter and brief happiness with Henry's father: one-legged beggar, brothel bouncer and ill-paid killer for a crooked businessman. Henry will later kill for a different coinage -- idealism -- and he too will be ill paid. From 5 on, the child roves the city with his tubercular little brother, another Victor. Doyle depicts streets of urchins begging, robbing and surviving between wit and wits' end. Henry boils baby rats, smears the broth on his arms, bags the frenzied adults attracted by the smell and sells them to be torn to pieces in the dog pits. For extra tips from the punters he holds a hand inside his writhing bagful. This first section ends when Henry is 8 and Victor dies coughing. It was the sound of the nighttime slums: ''Dead, dead silence except for the thousands coughing, a steady, terrible beat coming from the rooms above us and the basement areas, children and adults being choked to death by poverty.'' Henry reappears six years later at the Easter Rising siege of Dublin's General Post Office, a disciple of James Connolly, the leader of the insurrection's socialist wing. Henry recounts the fight, the surrender and his own escape to find enjoyable refuge with a lusty Dublin woman, and a job on the docks. There is much that is interesting here, especially the political distrust between Connolly's left-wing Citizen Army and the more conservative Irish Volunteers of Padraic Pearse. But for these 100 pages Doyle's control slips badly. For one thing, History with a capital ''H'' has requisitioned the author's winged realism, and until he gets on top of it -- as he decidedly does later -- the wings flap loosely. Many of the incidents seem stagy, fantastical or, worse, contrived for a point. More serious, and the main weakness of this first volume, is the epic inflation of Henry. He is an irresistible lover, prodigious in strength and daring, and wise in counsel. A picaresque hero bags out wearing the clothes of an epic hero or even epic antihero. Cervantes, the master, dressed Sancho and the Don separately. Amelia Stein/ Viking Roddy Doyle Doyle may be deliberately inflating his protagonist to guy his country's legendry. Before the book ends there will be several symbolic inflations: a brothel madam as the Ireland sow, a monstrous shadowy businessman-revolutionary as -- what? the Morrigan? -- and a woman warrior, a mix of Maude Gonne and Queen Maeve, who becomes Henry's true love; also a dubious whiff of magic realism. For a while, epic Henry threatens to gas out picaresque Henry as narrator/protagonist of Doyle's witty, furious and bitingly detailed story. In the astonishing last half of ''A Star Called Henry,'' an emissary from Michael Collins plucks Henry from the docks and enlists him for a double role -- daytime and nighttime, as it were. In the first he spends three years bicycling through Ireland, enlisting volunteers for the rebel army, training them and leading them in guerrilla operations. In the second he is a meticulous assassin, his victims' names passed to him on slips of paper. Many are policemen; others are infiltrators and traitors, at least ostensibly. The ''ostensibly'' will eventually catch up with Henry as he carries out his double mission, narrated with a splendor, wit and excitement that lift Doyle's writing to a new level. A lift from within, that is, and without inflation. The darkness, gradually closing in, is told with equal mastery. Henry underground is a great entertainment that -- seemingly without effort and certainly without imposition -- builds up a great anger. In peril, exhaustion and exhilaration, seemingly as one of Collins's inner circle, Henry begins to notice his exclusion. It is a class exclusion: he came from the ravening streets, the others from a settled Catholic world. When the insurgents create a shadow cabinet, the jailed De Valera becomes President and Collins Minister for Finance. Bicycling through the winter rains, Henry adds: ''Griffith became Minister for Home Affairs and Count Plunkett got Foreign Affairs. Brugha got Defense, the Countess got Labor and Mr. Gandon got Commercial Affairs and the Sea. Henry Smart got wet.'' This is not what mainly brings Henry's war to an end, though it is the heart of Doyle's class-enraged and wonderfully accomplished deflating. (He can be accomplished and deflating; it is inflating that wrong-foots him.) More dramatically, it is a lethal corruption. After the first year or two, Henry discovers that some of his fellow fighters around the country are making profitable arrangements with the enemy and that the assassination slips issued by the leaders carry the names of a new enemy: not policemen or traitors but the romantically inconvenient. His own name among them, of course. So it is off to London, shedding (I hope) all remaining tatters of epic outfitting, and set to gloriously undermine the next stage of Doyle's Irish history. Richard Eder writes articles and book reviews for The Times. Return to the Books Home Page

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser or activate Google Chrome Frame to improve your experience.

Get our Newsletter

• by Title by Author by Narrator
• New Reviews Check out our recent audiobook reviews.
• Search Reviews Find a pick by author, narrator or title.
• Earphones Awards Search our favorite listens with these award winners.
• Podcast Check out our Behind the Mic podcast.
• Curated Lists Editors' Picks on special topics.
• Golden Voices Explore & listen to the "Best of the Best" narrators
• Editors' Spotlight Features on narrators
• Talent Guide Professional resource to hire a narrator
• Audiobook Club Start a conversation with your book club
• Best Audiobooks 2023 Best Audiobooks
• Articles Discover the diverse voices of audiobooks
• Narrators Spotlight on popular narrators
• Authors Authors talking about their audiobooks
• Upcoming Titles Find upcoming audiobook release announcements
• Kids and Teens Listening selections for kids & teens with age levels
• Audie Awards 2024 Audie Awards
• Newsletters Sign up for FREE e-newsletters
• Subscribe to AudioFile Get print, digital, or gift magazine subscriptions
• Subscription Services Everything you need to know about subscriptions
• Pay your Bill Make a secure payment online
• What AudioFile? What can I do here?
• Who We love audiobooks! Meet our team of editors and reviewers
• Contact For customer service or with your feedback
• Community Collaboration with I'm Your Neighbor Books
• Articles Checkout the latest features
• Add to Favorites

A STAR CALLED HENRY

By roddy doyle | read by gerard doyle, fiction • 12.75 hrs. • unabridged • © 1999.

Roddy Doyle's new work covers the first twenty years in the life of Henry Smart, born and raised in abject poverty in the slums of Dublin. On his own by age 8, he is a full-fledged revolutionary by age 13, a combatant in the Easter Rebellion of 1919, and a self-commissioned "captain" in the IRA at age 15. Narrator Gerard Doyle has a lovely Irish voice (in both speech and song) and makes the listener feel totally embedded in the Ireland of the early twentieth century. He manages the voice of the city and the countryside, the educated and the illiterate, the young and the old, the men and the women with confident mastery. This is an outstanding narration. R.E.K. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/NOV 00]

Book pak • Recorded Books • 2000

CS ISBN 078874402X $81.00 • Nine cassettes

More reviews by Roddy Doyle

More reviews read by Gerard Doyle

The latest audiobook reviews, right in your inbox.

Get our FREE Newsletter and discover a world of audiobooks.

AudioFile Newsletter

Let us recommend your next great audiobook!

No algorithms here! We pick great audiobooks for you. Sign up for our free newsletter with audiobook love from AudioFile editors.

If you are already with us, thank you! Just click X above.

Thank you for signing up.

Thank you for contacting us!

Our group will review and follow up within 72 hours. Thanks for your interest!

Thank you for signing up!

Our group will review and follow up soon.

Roddy Doyle

A star called henry.

Select a format:

This is really a masterpiece

About the  author

More from this author.

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

By signing up, I confirm that I'm over 16. To find out what personal data we collect and how we use it, please visit our Privacy Policy

A Star Called Henry

39 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-12

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Hierarchy and Servitude in Colonial and Post-Colonial Ireland

As a “result of hundreds of years of colonialism,” the Irish people treated their British colonizers with “fear and respect” (218). Meanwhile, the job of the revolution was to “convince” Irish citizens both “that they have no betters” and to take ownership of the land that was rightfully theirs (218). By the end of the novel, when Ireland is “free in some shape or form” (315), men such as Ivan who trained to be freedom fighters have muscled in and taken control of the land, in the exploitative style of the old British colonizers. Under these circumstances, the quest for Irish freedom has been futile; power is, once more, concentrated in the hands of the few.

Plus, gain access to 8,400+ more expert-written Study Guides.

Including features:

Related Titles

By Roddy Doyle

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

The Commitments

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

Featured Collections

Historical Fiction

View Collection

Irish Literature

Memorial Day Reads

Military Reads

• “The Vegan Tourist”
• Vegan Vienna
• Media/Communications
• Book Reviews
• This & That
• #BöllerBoykott
• Hausverwaltung im Wohnungseigentum
• International Politics
• Information in English
• Informationen in deutscher Sprache

Book Review: “A Star Called Henry” by Roddy Doyle

Please note: I first published this book review on the “Goodreads”-website in 2022.

My rating: 3 (of 5) “stars”

I own a paperback copy of this book, which was published by Penguin Random House in 2005.

A very violent story, and utterly depressing. I started reading this book three years ago, but had to put it down after reading just a couple of chapters. It was just too depressing. The poverty, and acts of violence and neglect, horrific acts of animal cruelty described in this book — I just couldn’t stomach it. I finally picked the book up again three days ago (note: in February 2022) and started over. It’s a good book, no doubt about it. But “A Star called Henry” is Volume One in a trilogy, and after finishing this book, I have no desire to read volumes two and three. The story starts out strong, but it kind of fizzles out in the last few chapters, which are far less interesting than the first few chapters. And that’s why I’m giving the book a three-star rating.

• Search for:

Recent Posts

• Hausverwaltung im Schneckentempo – Finanzielle Auswirkungen für die Eigentümergemeinschaft (Teil 1)
• Kennt Ihre Hausverwaltung den Unterschied zwischen ordentlichen und außerordentlichen Agenden (Teil 1)?
• Unzufrieden mit der Hausverwaltung? Zuständigkeiten der Baupolizei (Teil 4 – gesetzlich vorgeschriebene Sicherheitsmaßnahmen)
• Unzufrieden mit der Hausverwaltung? Zuständigkeiten der Baupolizei (Teil 3 – Noch ein Beispiel für “Gefahr für die Gesundheit oder das Leben von Menschen”)
• Unzufrieden mit der Hausverwaltung? Zuständigkeiten der Baupolizei (Teil 2 – Gefahr für die Gesundheit oder das Leben von Menschen)
• Austrian Politics (7)
• Book Reviews (97)
• Hausverwaltung im Wohnungseigentum (10)
• International Politics (2)
• Media/Communications (6)
• Publishing (11)
• This & That (10)
• Vegan Living (101)
• August 2024  (5)
• June 2024  (6)
• March 2024  (38)
• February 2024  (22)
• January 2024  (32)
• July 2023  (2)
• October 2022  (2)
• November 2021  (55)
• February 2021  (51)
• December 2019  (1)
• FatFree Vegan Kitchen
• Healthy. Happy. Life
• Mindful Wanderlust
• Oh She Glows
• The Kind Life
• The Lotus and the Artichoke
• The Vegan Society
• Entries feed
• Comments feed
• WordPress.org

• Literature & Fiction

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

A Star Called Henry Audio CD – March 3, 2000

• Print length 1 pages
• Publisher Blackstone Publishing Inc
• Publication date March 3, 2000
• Dimensions 6 x 6 x 2 inches
• ISBN-10 1664625623
• ISBN-13 978-1664625624
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Blackstone Publishing Inc (March 3, 2000)
• Audio CD ‏ : ‎ 1 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1664625623
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1664625624
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.2 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 6 x 2 inches
• #21,536 in Books on CD
• #129,705 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Roddy doyle.

Roddy Doyle is the author of eight novels, a collection of stories, and Rory & Ita, a memoir of his parents. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. He lives and works in Dublin.

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 50% 28% 12% 6% 5% 50%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 50% 28% 12% 6% 5% 28%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 50% 28% 12% 6% 5% 12%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 50% 28% 12% 6% 5% 6%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 50% 28% 12% 6% 5% 5%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book great, fascinating, and enjoyable. They praise the writing style as brilliant and skilled. Readers also find the humor funny and have a keen sense of irony. Opinions differ on the story quality, with some finding it powerful and rollicking, while others say parts of it go nowhere.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book great, fantastic, and interesting. They also say it's enjoyable.

"... An interesting read , and vaulable for giving life to the comtemporary history of Ireland. And Doyle' style is always worth your time." Read more

"... It was a good read ." Read more

" Fantastic - a fresh perspective on a much-written about period of Irish history. Funny, surprising and brilliantly well written" Read more

"...many places, the book sweeps the reader along through the brutal, unsympathetic , and inhumane life of a poverty-stricken kid/man following in his..." Read more

Customers find the writing style brilliant and skilled.

"...of fiction reading, not only based on history, but through the creative writing , the story of Henry Smart reaches the depth of emotions, and takes..." Read more

"This is a beautifully written novel !..." Read more

"...Funny, surprising and brilliantly well written " Read more

"... Author is very skilled , and that's what saved me from putting this book down." Read more

Customers find the humor in the book funny and moving. They also appreciate the keen sense of irony.

"...It was historically accurate. It had a keen sense of irony ...." Read more

"... Funny , surprising and brilliantly well written" Read more

" Funny and Heartbreaking ..." Read more

" funny , moving - great read..." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the story quality. Some mention the storytelling invokes their imagination, is powerful, and rollicking. They also say the theme is very appealing and the book is an example of the importance of fiction reading. However, others say the ending is weak and parts of the story go nowhere.

"...The characters are very interesting but not likeable. The theme is very appealing ; one can sense the situation and the flavor of the creation of..." Read more

"...as I had hoped, wouldn't recommend, a bit too long and parts of the story went nowhere , was also hoping for a better ending." Read more

"...This book is an example of the importance of fiction reading , not only based on history, but through the creative writing, the story of Henry Smart..." Read more

"A gorgeous novel of poverty and brutality , love and betrayal, of freedom and its limitations...." Read more

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• About Amazon
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell products on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon and COVID-19
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices