Product Description

Life as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old Irish boy, Patrick Clarke, is a poignant voyage through a bewildering, ever-changing world of family, friends, dreams, and growing up. Winner of the Booker Prize. Reprint. Tour.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32553 in Books
• Published on: 1995-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com 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

From Publishers Weekly
Doyle's Booker Prize-winning novel, told from the perspective of Irish, working-class 10-year-old Paddy Clarke, was a seven-week PW bestseller.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-A look at the daily exploits and thoughts of a 10-year-old Irish boy. As the story progresses, readers become more and more aware of the anguish that Paddy Clarke is feeling as he becomes conscious of the impending breakup of his parents' marriage. They may find it disconcerting to see the pain he inflicts on others (preferably younger or weaker boys) for the sheer "fun" of it and the dangerous antics of Paddy and his friends. The novel is powerfully written and slowly draws readers into the protagonist's complex personality. However, in spite of the critical acclaim the book has gotten, its lack of a straightforward plot and its violence and petty lawlessness to the exclusion of the character development may limit its appeal to YAs.
Shirley Blaes, R.E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Wow. Simply... wow.
I had, at the age of thirty five years, forgotten quite a lot - if not most - of what it meant to be ten years old.

I have no idea how Roddy Doyle managed this incredible book - how he captured the wonder, the pain, the self-importance of being a child - but he did, I'm glad for it.

If you can't remember the wonder, the adventure, the all-engrossing pain of being a child, you should pick up this book.

Edgy and funny
When his novel "The Commitments" became a smash hit movie, Irish writer Roddy Doyle acquired a vast new American audience for that book and the two others (The Snapper; The Van) in his gritty and hilarious trilogy of Dublin working - or rather workless-class life.

Tragedy lies just the other side of wildest laughter in Doyle's first three novels. Each is characterized by lots of colorful, streetwise dialogue, fearlessly resourceful characters and loads of ironic wit.

This novel, winner of London's prestigious 1993 Booker Prize, is different.

Paddy Clarke is ten in 1968 and the narrative explores what that means in an almost stream-of-consciousness fashion. Paddy and his friends stage a Viking funeral for a dead rat, run the Grand National over the neighbors' hedged gardens, set fires at building sites, rob ladies' magazines (because they were the easiest) from shops, and torment each other, forming fluid alliances and watching for weaknesses. They are funny and frightening and unaware of both.

The early part of the book roams from hair-raising adventure to adventure, incorporating casual cruelties and unheeded dangers with equal aplomb. Family intrudes only as a framework, a background of sustenance and tiresome restraints. Sinbad, Paddy's younger brother, is a tag-along nuisance, tolerated primarily as a victim for experimentation, such as forcing a capsule of lighter fluid between his teeth and lighting it.

Paddy is full of life and contradictions; his mind is never still and, while full of wonder, not introspective. His rich fantasy life is more likely to be cruel than kind. He's as typical as any individual can be.

Then the ever-simmering tensions between his parents intensify. The mysterious fights, his mother's tears, his father's black moods, move into Paddy's life and begin to take it over. Not that Paddy abandons pick-up soccor games or schemes against the boys in the corporation houses. But he begins to see his little brother with new eyes - a person who can share the burden of fear and maybe help stop it from happening.

But Sinbad is uncooperative. Too young or too-long tormented by his older brother, he refuses to even listen. Paddy is left to turn the tide by himself. He stays awake all night because if he does it will stop them fighting; he watches them and interposes himself between them, learning how to turn their anger.

The last third of the book is filled with gut-wrenching uncertainty. The sense that anything can happen at any time keeps the reader on tenterhooks, no longer able to laugh but hopeful, like Paddy, that normality will return.

Doyle has created a masterful portrait of a boy - a child who observes so much more than adults expect but whose understanding is skewed by being a child. Paddy Clarke is funny, exuberant, unpredictable, subtle and heartbreaking.

A magical journey back to childhood
By far one of the best books I have ever read, Roddy Doyle really takes you into the mind of Paddy Clarke, a young boy growing up in Barrytown in the 1960s. As we get older, we often forget how the world looks to young people, and Doyle has taken us back to relive it. All the doubts, fears, fun and games are there -- and the result of Doyle's prose and heartfelt descriptions of life for a ten-year-old whose world is falling apart is nothing short of magic. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone