(A day after finishing this I devoured the second in the Barrytown Trilogy, The Snapper, and among other things it shows that Doyle can write complex, nuanced characters.) In fact, for half the book I had to keep going back to the page that listed the band members’ names and what instrument they played: I say “characters,” but there’s not a lot of depth to them. (No wonder it was adapted for actors to perform.) Slagging each other over a few pints, joking about everything, is a sport – it’s the way they communicate. It’s riotously fun, filled with piss and vinegar and great snatches of music, and boy do these characters know how to talk. But I guess through cultural osmosis I knew what the book was about: the making (and abrupt unmaking) of a north Dublin soul band. I’m one of the few people on the planet who’s never seen the Alan Parker movie, and when I was in London last fall, I noticed there was even a long-running stage version of it. I was going to attempt to write this review in the working class Dublin slang that Roddy Doyle’s colourful characters use, but, ya know, Jaysis, I’d come o’ looking like a fuckin’ eejit.
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