The Commitments (1991)

Pamela's Nite

Roddy Doyle (1958-) via The Guardian

"I still live in the same neighbourhood where I grew up, and I still have to face the milkman and the neighbours if they don't like what I write. "
Birthplace
Dublin, Ireland

Education
University College, Dublin

Other jobs
He was originally a teacher in his old school; his students were the inspiration for his self-published first novel, The Commitments. He didn't give up teaching until the day Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha came out.

Did you know?
He swears that his first novel, the promisingly titled Your Granny Was a Hunger Striker, will never see the light of day.

Critical verdict
Critically and popularly acclaimed for his Barrytown trilogy, a Booker Prize for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (he had already been shortlisted for The Van) drew some anti-populist sneers - and sold more copies than any other winner. Doyle was the Dublin northsider's pride and joy, until a brutally frank film about domestic abuse (Family, later developed on page as the extraordinary The Woman who Walked into Doors) was seen as over-dramatised betrayal.
Recommended works
Doyle's greatest portrayals of dignity in degradation are Jimmy Rabbitte coping with unemployment in The Van and alcoholic, abused Paula, Doyle's only first-person narrator, in The Woman who Walked into Doors.

Influences
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha pays homage to Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (compare the opening lines).

Now read on
Frank McCourt; Patrick McCabe

Adaptations
The Barrytown trilogy has been committed to celluloid; first was The Commitments (dir. Alan Parker), adapted by the duo behind 70s comedy Porridge and The Likely Lads as an exuberant musical with a simple storyline and plenty of jokes. Stephen Frears directed The Snapper and The Van, with screenplays by Doyle; the mood is more bittersweet and understated, but retains the authenticity of the books. Doyle has also written two plays, War (1989), about a pub quiz, and Brownbread (1993), in which a bishop is kidnapped.