Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Hardcover

Doyle, Roddy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670853453 ISBN 13: 9780670853458

Publisher: Viking, 1994

Synopsis

Paddy Clarke, a ten-year-old boy who longs to be a missionary, experiences life's joys and setbacks--specifically his ma and da's fights--as he grows up in Liffey, Ireland, in the late 1960s. By the author of The Van. Winner of the Booker Prize.

About this title

Review:

In Roddy Doyle's Booker Prize-winning novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, an Irish lad named Paddy rampages through the streets of Barrytown with a pack of like-minded hooligans, playing cowboys and Indians, etching their names in wet concrete and setting fires. Roddy Doyle has captured the sensations and speech patterns of preadolescents with consummate skill, and managed to do so without resorting to sentimentality. Paddy Clarke and his friends are not bad boys; they're just a little bit restless. They're always taking sides, bullying each other and secretly wishing they didn't have to. All they want is for something--anything--to happen.

Throughout the novel, Paddy teeters on the nervous verge of adolescence. In one scene, Paddy tries to make his little brother's hot water bottle explode, but gives up after stomping on it just one time: "I jumped on Sinbad's bottle. Nothing happened. I didn't do it again. Sometimes when nothing happened it was really getting ready to happen." Paddy Clarke senses that his world is about to change forever--and not necessarily for the better. When he realizes that his parents' marriage is falling apart, Paddy stays up all night listening, half-believing that his vigil will ward off further fighting. It doesn't work, but it is sweet and sad that he believes it might. Paddy's logic may be fuzzy, but his heart is in the right place. --Jill Marquis

Review:

"This is one of the most compelling novels I've read in ages, a triumph of style and perception" (Joseph O' Connor Irish Times)

"Gloriously triumphant...confirms Doyle as the best novelist of his generation" (Nick Hornby Literary Review)

"Truthful, hilarious, painfully sad" (Spectator)

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0670853453
• ISBN 13: 9780670853458
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288