Oct 25, 2003 11:57 AM
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(Updated Oct 25, 2003 11:57 AM)
Like all Roddy Doyle novels, Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha is a wonderful read. Poignant and heartbreakingly funny at times, it’s a lot like the Irish themselves, raising a beer mug against the vicissitudes of fate.
Paddy Clark and his brother (endearingly nicknamed Sinbad) are two lower middle class kids in Ireland. Once you get used to the Irish English, a language in itself, and Doyle’s dialogue oriented style, the book moves fast – through the childhood escapades of Paddy and his friends and the looming shadow of domestic trouble, just hinted at in the beginning, but growing more pronounced as the novel progresses. It makes you both yearn for the past, and yet shudder when you remember your own humiliations and uncertainties from that time.
To explain the unique title, which is just brilliant, would be to give the game away. It’s worth reading the book just to unravel the mystery behind it! Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha, incidentally won a Booker Prize.
