Although Doyle’s novel is often funny, the overall effect is anything but. Life in Barrytown in 1968 is both hard and confining, as Doyle knows so well from the fourteen years he spent teaching in just such a North Dublin area. Family life largely centers on the television; school seems little more than an endless round of intimidation and humiliation. In the world between, the world of disappearing farms and half-finished building sites, Paddy and the other Barrytown boys play soccer, defend their territory, run through their neighbors’ yards, steal boards and nails, and, in neighboring Bayside, magazines. Mostly they try to belong, though to a group that can only define itself in negative terms, on the basis of someone being excluded. Helpless witness to the breakup of his parents’ marriage, Paddy becomes that someone, his vulnerability like some physical weakness that the others find vaguely threatening. With great sensitivity and without a single misstep, false note, or moment’s condescension, Doyle renders Paddy Clarke’s world in terms of what his young protagonist can see but only dimly and reluctantly understand.
Although Doyle’s novel is often funny, the overall effect is anything but. Life in Barrytown in 1968 is both hard and confining, as Doyle knows so well from the fourteen years he…
