Sunday, August 26, 2007

Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry

Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry. Doyle is one of my new favorites. Tender and cynical, he gets tone perfectly. Henry Smart, hero, warrior, urchin, and lover, is our immensely entertaining narrator. We get a hyper-Dickensian view of squalid and desperate Dublin, a dark view of the Irish Rebellion, and plenty of words, blood and love. I'm probably the only person, though, who didn't prefer this massive, ambitious, and bloody epic to the comic story The Van. I sometimes like the smaller, more perfect books instead of huge masterpieces.

11 comments:

falcons said...

Gwen, I think that I had better start reading Roddy Doyle...should I start with this one?

gwen said...

I'll mail you the van and this one and you can decide! - they're the only two I've read...

falcons said...

Uncle Richard is here with me right now and he highly recommends A Confederacy of Dunces....I am starting it and i think that you will love it. A real farce!

gwen said...

Oh, I do love that book! I nearly bought it for madie, but I wasn't sure if she would like it. Bredon definitely would, though.

gwen said...

UR would love roddy doyle - we should give him the van.

Jenelle Leanne said...

Hey Gwen, have you by any chance read any of the Jasper Fford "Thursday Next" books? I think you might like them.

Jenelle Leanne said...

Sorry, it's me, Jenelle... I forgot I changed my login name! :-)

Anonymous said...

Jenelle, I have heard about those books! Another cousin on the Clay side reccomened those last summer and they sounded great! Are they about time travel? Aunt Jenny

Jenelle Leanne said...

They are not about time travel... they are set in "our" world circa 1985 but it is a futuristic 1985 and all our rules of science can be broken. Thursday is a "Literatech" a literature detective whose main job is to hunt down plagiarists because it is a huge crime in her world. Eventually she ends up inside the plots of several classics and gets to interact with the characters there. Very witty. The first book is "The Eyre Affair"

Anonymous said...

That sounds wonderful. I'm off to the library tomorrow! Thanks. A.J.

gwen said...

hey, I haven't read those but they sound great. In the nearly unimaginable future (oh, ok, christmas break) when I have spare time, I'll enjoy reading them!